"Fresh Start"

is what Geanine calls it.
I really can't wait for 2009. A chance to begin again, anywhere, with anyone, doing anything. New friendships and relationships, and old ones approached in a new way.
Sure, there are feelings and memories that will still be there, but that all will have been from last year -- or the years before that. They're best left out of the equation now.
It's an interesting concept. Though I've kind of lost a little faith in it since she told me yesterday, for certain reasons (not involving my last entry).
I guess I should at least try it.

Send.

I didn't sleep last night. I couldn't.
I sat until 3 a.m. in front of my computer, paralyzed. My finger was poised over the mouse for hours; on the screen, the cursor hovered on the "Send" button of a fully-typed message, and next to that, a picture of Liz smiled at me.
I was so tempted to send that message, to tell her all that had happened in the past eight months and all that I had felt, to let her know that after all this time I simply wished her happiness and hoped that she would have a merry Christmas.
But I would look at that picture again and my mind would start racing. She's moved on; she's with Ed now; she's happy. She doesn't need an abrupt reminder like this, of how her last relationship went bad. Images and memories were playing behind my eyelids whenever I blinked. Among these was the familiar shadow of February twelfth: a ghost that has visited me far too often -- me, leaning against a bookcase in Barnes & Noble, hanging my head, fighting my own choking sobs until my lungs hurt; her hand on my arm, her eyes trying to bring mine up from the floor; those words...
"I'm not saying it's completely over. We could be together, but...not right now. Neither of us can do this right now."
I let out a bitter chuckle.
"What?"
"It's just that...in every story I've heard --"
"They don’t get back together?"
"Yeah."
The pause. "We're not every story."

I was just so tired of being the same old story. I was tired of knowing that we hadn't even managed a simple friendship after she left. I was tired of looking back and finding only bitterness and resentment after that, too, fell apart. I just wanted so badly to click "Send" and have that message shatter it all -- one last peaceful letter, a hello and a goodbye to take the place of normal, post-breakup coldness and distance.
But I looked at that picture. I heard her voice, her laugh, for the first time since reality sank in, eight months ago; I saw her familiar gestures and expressions.
And at three o'clock in the morning, I decided that she was best left alone. I realized that the only way for me to really move on was to move on, and stop agonizing over that fucking "Send" button. I moved the cursor and closed the window. My last feeling was of something in me shrinking away and sputtering out like a candle.
This loneliness is getting to me.

Montmartre.

The more I read about that place, the more pictures I see of it, the more research I do into the people and the flavor and the locale, the more I feel like I belong there.
Haven't heard o fit? It's in the Paris, the 18e arrondissement (on the northern edge).
I think I'll craft a story set there. Sure, a lot more thorough research is required, and I'll have to interview my cousin -- who will be in Paris in a matter of days -- to get a better idea of what it's like, but it should be worth it. Thinking back to Rey and Stawiarz, maybe photography should be a motif (implying memory? maybe the POV character has amnesia? interesting conflict there...). I think I'll start now.

Catch twenty-two: I couldn't get a job because I didn't have experience (that I remember), and I couldn't get experience because I didn't have a job. The most I could hope for was a few euros here, a few there, submitting my photography to low-key papers and magazines -- no major event coverage; just spontaneous compositions. As far as these went, the Tour Eiffel and other tourist magnets had long ago become dead subjects, and photographing muggings and car accidents made me feel somehow guilty.
The way I saw it, people-watching was my last -- and easiest -- option. Any cafe in Paris was an outpost.
Late morning on a windy October day, I sat outside A La Mère Catherine with coffee and my camera. At another table a woman with deep, clear eyes was hunting in her pockets for matches; a cigarette hung from her lip. Rue du Mont-Cenis was behind her, and cars chugged hurriedly by. The day was overcast, and the glow provided by the sun was half-assed, at best -- my lighting of choice. But it was a tough situation, as I was waiting for multiple factors to come into play: a leaf the color of fire was straining to depart its branch in the wind; the woman would undoubtedly face the sun as she lit her cigarette; and several cars were turning the corner down the road.
Wait for it...wait for it...
The woman lit her cigarette, and with that first puff looked up at a building across the street -- the sun danced in her eyes, brought a soft light to her slim hands and cheeks. The leaf dropped and drifted into the frame, and the cars slipped through the background. All of this was captured on long exposure: the smoke, the leaf and the cars were all blended together, with the girl and her eyes and her pensive expression at the clear center.
Beautiful. I sipped at my steaming cup, unwrapped the square of dark chocolate accompanying the café noir on its dish. Just beautiful.
Cath purred and rubbed against my leg; I looked down at her, and she looked up at me. I read my cat's body language: "Can we go now?"
With a smile, I stroked her back and stood. A wave to the waitress -- who was inside -- and a five-euro bill later, I was on my way home.

Around that time, since before I could remember, I was living with Cath in that tiny shack on the edge of Montmartre. Its door creaked when I walked in; because of a peculiar slant in the street, common in my neighborhood, it slammed shut behind me.
I had always worried about that door breaking itself.
I tugged the pull string and a bulb above me cast the room into light: my cot was laid on wooden planks laid on the stone floor, with a large chest nearby for clothes and another chest beside for other things. Two bowls -- one for solids, one for liquids -- were at my bedside for Cath; a rolled-shut paper bag of dry cat food and a bottle of mineral water rested nearby. I quickly prepared a meal for her. As she ate and drank, I watched. She had grown in the past two years.
The past two years...
My thoughts strayed to the contents of my non-clothing chest, as they usually did. Eight and a half years' worth of memories, in the form of Moleskine journals and keepsakes and photographs and a bottle and a dead rose.
There had been a girl. Her name was Summer. We started dating in my third year of high school. Our fifth anniversary was celebrated with a small bottle of champagne -- among other things I couldn't find. I wouldn't have known any of this without having kept those journals, or collecting those keepsakes; she had left me two years before, on my twenty-third birthday, when I emerged from my coma without a single memory.

Keep in mind; this is towards a first draft. It's supposed to suck. Ask any author who knows anything about writing fiction: they'll tell you the same. To quote Hemingway: "The first draft of anything is shit."
On a slightly unrelated note, I'm applying today for a job at Barnes & Noble. Wish me luck!

Globes and Maps.

Ever heard of Xavier Rey? Or Marcin Stawiarz?...I've been looking at a lot of their work lately. It's been making me think.
I feel caged, surrounded by these walls; the majority of the time, my mind is cast off elsewhere -- usually to Europe (Prague and Spain and Paris and places of that sort). I feel like if I were just able to travel, really travel, and see what I want to see, then I would be able to write and photograph and think to my full potential...but until such a day comes when I can hop on that plane and not look back, I can't help but wonder if I'll just go through life without any sort of meaning. I don't have the funds for such a trip, or the equipment or the massive stock of empty journals.
I guess, as a writer, the only thing I can do until then is let my characters have the adventures for me.

The End.

Now, come one, come all, to this tragic affair;
Wipe off that make-up -- what sin is despair?
So throw on the black dress, mix in with the lot;
You might wake up and notice you're someone you're not...

Autumn rain. A tree the color of fire drops its embers, leaves them to drift in puddles on the pavement. Sun meets cloud cover and quits, allowing the cemetery only a half-assed, diffused glow.
Amidst the season's conflagration, a snake appears: the Hearse and its tentative following. Car doors open to an outpour -- black suits; black dresses; black umbrellas; black expressions...a casket, blackest of all.
Of the mourners, some have been drinking -- their whispers fill the fall with whiskey -- and some have been smoking. They are all ghosts, suspended in an altered state of sobriety.
Here, the grinding of a flint, and a flame, and life is breathed into a cigarette; there, plastic buds begin to play for an old lover, and all other sound is drowned away.
So many faces, each facing their own music. No one is liking the notes that they hear.