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For a while now, I have enjoyed reading and commenting on other members' contributions to this forum, without actually taking the plunge and sharing anything of my own.
So, let me know what you think of the following. Don't hold back. Feel free to rip it apart.
If I could finish it
It was not a consciously cultivated project. She used to insist on that point. She had invested a great deal of time and energy to avoid degenerating into what she used to call a shoe-pebble: the kind of person who derives gratification from willfully dissenting from common opinion. Dissension for dissension's sake. So when she realised how much her tastes – intellectually, politically, even hobbies and fun, literature and movies - had begun to diverge from most people she knew back home, she scrutinised herself to discover explanations. The more logical the better.She wanted to account for, and justify, her dissension. The truth was that she did not always understand her own tastes. So, she went as far as inventing explanations. Not that she would ever admit to the fabrication.Either way, the consequence was a practiced eloquence and a lucid capacity for self-expression.
Her expanded opportunities,afforded by the privilege of a scholarship to study here, meant that she had access to more varied experiences, and so she discovered that she adored movies that no one back home had ever heard of.That was not surprising. But eventhe new friends she made over here, were simply disinterested in these titles. In her own words, she had “an irreversible taste for movies designed to jar the mind out of its accustomed neural pathways, into mazes where it either made sense of new sensations or lost sleep trying”. Included in her list of favourites was Pan’s Labyrinth, The Fountain, Never Let Me Go, and A Reasonable Man. She had an abiding revulsion for special effects unmoored from a meticulously developed plot…
“Good grief,it’s whiney! It’s nagging and snobbish and verbose.”
“The opening is meant to be that way. It suggests that some people would have had a hard time understanding her. It’s important to the story.”
“I think it’s too much. It’ll put readers off.”
“Really? That bad?”
“Really. It’s just kind of dull. And have I mentioned how snobbish it all sounds.”
“It sets the scene. It creates a basis for conflict. Tension is central to the story. Between her, her home, and this place.”
“I’m so glad you said central and not the heart. What a cliche.”
“I also managed to avoid core. Probably contrary to your expectations.”
“Now that was cliched. Way over dramatic.”
“I guess.”
“So are you going to drop it?”
“I was thinking I might just rethink the opening?”
“Rethink the opening?It’s the only bit you’ve written so far.”
“True. But that’s okay. You don’t need to have everything planned to make a start. I know this story is worth telling.”
“I guess. But… Look, you know I’ve got your best interests at heart, right. Right?”
“Yeah, of course, sure, I was just listening attentively.”
“Okay, fine. I’m just saying I can’t see anyone being interested. I’m not making light of what happened, but I don’t.”
“I know.”
“Well then. Maybe just drop this. Start again. On something new.”
“Again?”
“Write about what you know. You’re not exactly Alex Gregor.”
“Who’s Alex Gregor?”
“TV psychologist. Prolific writer. His programme was on last night. Your thoughts were elsewhere. I was paying attention.”
“Right. Okay.”
We stumble on, either with timid,insipid little steps, carefully examining every pace, or with crude faltering bounds like drunkards convinced of our own sobriety. We shamble on, either without direction or with arrogant presumption, not because we are surrounded by darkness, but because the hard light of two irreconcilable truths burn insistently into our eyes. One beam demands that we embrace the inevitability of progress, and commit ourselves to the inexorable upward march of human accomplishment, if we would only try hard enough. The second derides the first, insisting that we notice its hypocrisy. It compels us to confront the scope of human weakness, and its corruption of progress. What middle way can we tread between these devouring lights?
“The tone is too dramatic.”
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, I sincerely appreciate your honesty and-”
“You kind of rely on it.”
“Yes, thanks, of course -but if you won’t at least let me finish, I’m not going to show any of the drafts to you.”
“I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just looking out for you. Besides, how exactly are you going to manage that? I’m behind the same eyes you use to write this stuff… Hey, hold on. This is about her again.”
As a habit, whenever she was arguing a case in class, she held her hand up at the level of her shoulder, as if to balance it on the narrow point of her wrist. Her fingers stretched up and away, as if she would contain the contents of her thoughts in the cup of her hand, and keep it all from spilling. Then, as the tangent of her mental explorations became increasingly firm and directed, her hand began to move in circles, building speed until, having reached a satisfactorily complete junction, she would pause for comments from me. Having thus blended what began as a timid and then delirious network of ideas, an attentive listener would be able to see the mixture settle and coalesce into a humble but sophisticated whole. And whether to concur or critique, any comments from me or her fellow students would first have to admit that at least one incisive point had been made. I suspect that many of her peers would have performed far worse in their essays in Contemporary Film Studies if deprived of the benefits of her contributions. This is the image that came to mind when I heard the news that during the holidays, she had traveled back home. Some ex-boyfriend had hassled her one night and, in a fit of drunkenness or worse intoxication, stabbed her.
“It’s not a story. It’s an announcement of what happened.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know how to tell this story do you?”
“No.”
“Then why do you keep trying?”
“Because I can do better than Professor Ladelle.”
“What did she have to say?”
“At the memorial service.”
“Remind me; it was like a year ago.”
“You were there with me, obviously, when she quoted that line from the song.”
“We are stardust… something… got to get ourselves back to the garden. So?”
“That was symptomatic of the way she sees the world. We’re all just passers-by. Eventually all this hum-drum, gross, unfulfilling material world goes away and we pass on…”
“To a better place. Yeah, I think she meant for that to be a comfort to the parents and friends.”
“It feels unsatisfying.”
“That’s why you’re still trying to write this? Because you’re unsatisfied.”
“She died because the world, this country, is still so brutally unequal.”
“And now that you, all of a sudden, care about all that, you have a right to take offence at people offering assurances about some disembodied afterlife?”
“It ignores the way things are. Makes it out as ultimately unimportant.”
“You’re being childish and over-analytical. Actually there’s a better expression for your condition.”
“PTSD?”
“Got it in one go. You just need time. Anyway, if you’re so upset about this, I would have thought you’d be talking to Professor Krygen.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s involved in all those out-reach programmes. What are they called again? Today for Tomorrow? Progress… something?”
“I don’t know that I believe in those. All that conviction in science and technology. I’ve heard rumours of funds being mismanaged.”
“Well… then you’re just being… a pebble in my shoe.I’m just being realistic; and realistically speaking, you are far more pitiable than either Ladelle or Krygen. And you’re wasting both our time. Just let it go.”
If I could finish it
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