20130128

hope, pt. 5

Nicholas.
Telling you that you bugged the shit out of me is probably not going to come as a great surprise, since I'm pretty sure you did it on purpose. But there was still something compelling about you, even if I couldn't figure it out. I remember sometimes you'd ask me why I even liked you, which was a fair question, and I'd always say something like "I don't know; you're a mystery, I guess."


And it's true. You were really the only thing I cared about, and it was as inexplicable as you were, and it was spiraling out of control and I had no idea how to stop it, and everything I did just made things worse. Then, without any sort of warning, you disappeared. You'd gone off to London, according to the letter I got weeks later. And you seemed almost apologetic.

You needn't have been. You needn't have worried about anything. I was relieved, at first, and then the future seemed brighter, like a cloud had been lifted from my life. There was nothing left to worry about. I could conquer the world, just then.

The feeling didn't last, of course, but that's the thing about hope, isn't it? It never does.

2 comments:

Kizolk said...

Now that I think of it -- maybe I shouldn't have -- could it be that Tow Waits influenced your work? I don't know, I was reading this entry, and for some reason, I suddenly thought of "Watch you disappear" (in Alice. I'm afraid Alice and Blood Money are the only Waits albums I know well).

Of course, the fact that we talked about Tom Waits previously probably biased my opinion, and that particular entry doesn't necessarily have much to do with that particular song. But there's that bleak timelessness in some his and your works, so I don't know. By the way, I like the layout/colours of your blog. I never read the entries in my feed reader, it doesn't feel the same.

rs said...

alice and blood money are both pretty excellent. it wasn't a conscious influence, but I'm pretty sure i've written things inspired by that song in particular before, so it's not unlikely.

every story this month has been a story i've either written before, or the backstory to a story i've written before. a lot of the ones this year will probably be, but i'm not sure yet. which is to say: this is all very meta for me, so the inspiration for these is filtered through other things.

the layout is probably not original, but i spent a really long time playing with the colors until i liked it, so i'm glad someone else likes it!