epfleego
12-08-2011, 09:15 AM
A quick introduction to my first post. I'm only twenty, but I have enjoyed writing since I was eight years old. So don't spare the feelings of a "new writer." I'd love to hear everything you have to say, if you have anything at all. You should also know that I've spent a long time developing a certain style. However, I've decided that I'd like to move on and change whatever that style was, once again. To something more disjointed and energetic, and less personal. Change. I've been thinking about it a lot, and it's no coincidence that this is what my latest story is about. It's a short look into the mind of a fictional man. It was fun to write and seemed to complete itself in a matter of minutes. Thanks for your time.
Cause is Effect
There is a strange feeling I get before I change homes. Do you know that feeling? Perhaps not, but we’ve all heard that change effects a cause. Strangely enough, in these cases, change is both the cause and the effect. The occurrence of change manifests the emotion I have no name for, except its own: “change.” This is, of course, the type of change that you know is going to happen; the kind that you make happen. However, leaving the place that you’ve come to call home, whether it take three months or three years, is special.
Today, I walked past the window in my apartment– not the only one, but the one past the bathroom door that I look out of every day– and all of the buildings seem somehow different. Not that they look unusual or one had popped up without my noticing, but different. Except– and here’s the hardest part to explain– maybe I am simply projecting my self-perception onto something I had up until that point thought was so familiar. The buildings suddenly– though maybe I could have noticed it before had I looked harder– seem further away, or maybe my head is trying to tell me that I’m missing something. “There is something there you’ve never seen before. Look harder!” it– he, I, they, somebody– says.
There’s no reply, is there? These days, we are supposed to talk our minds into submission, but how do you talk to something that you can’t identify? Is it a thought, a feeling, a regret? So instead of suffering a classic, literary inner-battle, I linger– just linger, not too long– at the window and just stare, because maybe then I’ll see what it is I am missing. Before the stone of anxiety I’ve kept down with work, laughter and cigarettes– at the scientific rate of cancer before forty– can become the lump in my throat, I convince myself that I need to make a phone call. I have things to do besides figure out what it is that I’m feeling.
Through the scribbling, conversations and smoke it keeps coming back. Someday soon, the view I see every day will be only a memory– then I’ll forget all together– and I will go on to call a new place “home.” Here he is again, “What are you going to leave behind?” This time– maybe– there is a reply. So I spend the days leading up to my departure looking around my apartment. If I want my security deposit back, I can’t leave anything behind, except perhaps my smell.
They say smell is the sense closest linked to memory. “Things happened in this apartment, people lived here, this was a home,” says the smell– those phantom memories– of too many people, too many drinks too much incense and just enough tobacco. Have you ever seen those overly sentimental movies– there’s such a thing as too much sentiment– where the girl cries over her ex-whatever’s sweater? “It still smells like him,” they say, and so they give it away. Eventually, a new man wears that sweater until it is ready to break a new heart. That’s what I spend these last days thinking about. Someone is going to erase the home I made here– have a ritual party and claim it as their own– and I’m about to do the same thing. Start over and trample over someone else’s memories and domain, until I can finally call them my own.
Do you know that feeling? Perhaps not, I hear that no one feels the same things.
Cause is Effect
There is a strange feeling I get before I change homes. Do you know that feeling? Perhaps not, but we’ve all heard that change effects a cause. Strangely enough, in these cases, change is both the cause and the effect. The occurrence of change manifests the emotion I have no name for, except its own: “change.” This is, of course, the type of change that you know is going to happen; the kind that you make happen. However, leaving the place that you’ve come to call home, whether it take three months or three years, is special.
Today, I walked past the window in my apartment– not the only one, but the one past the bathroom door that I look out of every day– and all of the buildings seem somehow different. Not that they look unusual or one had popped up without my noticing, but different. Except– and here’s the hardest part to explain– maybe I am simply projecting my self-perception onto something I had up until that point thought was so familiar. The buildings suddenly– though maybe I could have noticed it before had I looked harder– seem further away, or maybe my head is trying to tell me that I’m missing something. “There is something there you’ve never seen before. Look harder!” it– he, I, they, somebody– says.
There’s no reply, is there? These days, we are supposed to talk our minds into submission, but how do you talk to something that you can’t identify? Is it a thought, a feeling, a regret? So instead of suffering a classic, literary inner-battle, I linger– just linger, not too long– at the window and just stare, because maybe then I’ll see what it is I am missing. Before the stone of anxiety I’ve kept down with work, laughter and cigarettes– at the scientific rate of cancer before forty– can become the lump in my throat, I convince myself that I need to make a phone call. I have things to do besides figure out what it is that I’m feeling.
Through the scribbling, conversations and smoke it keeps coming back. Someday soon, the view I see every day will be only a memory– then I’ll forget all together– and I will go on to call a new place “home.” Here he is again, “What are you going to leave behind?” This time– maybe– there is a reply. So I spend the days leading up to my departure looking around my apartment. If I want my security deposit back, I can’t leave anything behind, except perhaps my smell.
They say smell is the sense closest linked to memory. “Things happened in this apartment, people lived here, this was a home,” says the smell– those phantom memories– of too many people, too many drinks too much incense and just enough tobacco. Have you ever seen those overly sentimental movies– there’s such a thing as too much sentiment– where the girl cries over her ex-whatever’s sweater? “It still smells like him,” they say, and so they give it away. Eventually, a new man wears that sweater until it is ready to break a new heart. That’s what I spend these last days thinking about. Someone is going to erase the home I made here– have a ritual party and claim it as their own– and I’m about to do the same thing. Start over and trample over someone else’s memories and domain, until I can finally call them my own.
Do you know that feeling? Perhaps not, I hear that no one feels the same things.