a morning walk

Today I drove to school early, prepared to spend the usual 45 minutes doing battle for a parking space in the fine arts center parking lot. That parking lot is at most a five or ten minute walk from all my classes, which is why I like it. Doing battle consists mostly of circling the parking lot like a hungry vulture, searching for unsuspecting pedestrians and following them like a creepy stalker when they walk to their cars... and waiting, ready to pounce on the open parking space. It is a battle because there are usually very many other cars also circling the lot like vultures, and one must employ both utmost stealth and perseverance in order to win a parking space.

But when I got to the fine arts center parking lot I really didn't feel like doing the creepy stalking vulture thing. I just didn't want to. It's really aggravating and stressful. So after a brief prowl around, I left the fine arts center and cruised down the road to the exiled parking lot on Plains Road, which had gazillions of empty spaces. No fight. The lack of battle and vultures was relieving but I dreaded the long walk uphill to Independence Hall which is pretty much the furthest building from the exiled parking lot.

I usually don't like walking because I rush and feel like I have to almost run, because I'm usually late, and by the time I get where I want to be, I feel like I'm about to keel over. And while I'm doing the mad rush I just keep thinking of negative things, for instance: "Argh I hate this hill," "The wind is going to mess up my hair," "The mud is never going to come out of my shoes," "I'm pretty sure I forgot to do my homework again." Mostly dumb things that I know don't matter at all and usually don't think about, but for some reason when I'm already aggravated (like when in a hurry) thoughts like these just breed and multiply.

But today, since I got there early, I had lots of time, so I decided to walk slowly. I had to make a conscious effort to do this and whenever I caught myself trying to rush, I had to remind myself to calm down and go slowly. Then I realized that I was happy. The weather was pretty much my perfect weather: around thirty-five degrees, not windy, cold but not painfully cold. There was a nice light that washed over the winter trees and grass and a vibrant blue sky above.

It made me remember something that used to be really important to me. I used to think that finding answers and analyzing life was wrong and mostly pointless, and that just being was the best way to live. Appreciating what is around you and experiencing nature and life. This was also when I was kind of a pantheist and thought anyone could find spirituality in everything, like trees and flowers and other people. I really miss that. I almost became an atheist in the past few months, or at least an extreme doubter, and also just mostly stopped appreciating life, because I couldn't shake the sad thought of everything being temporary or illusory. But this morning as I walked up the hill to my class I felt the cynicism falling away, dissolving. For the first time in a really long time, I felt calm instead of anxious and happy instead of morose. Like things were right and good and beautiful in the late morning winter sunlight.

an encounter with the law

BLOG!

I have been doing all right since school began. I think it is good for me to have somewhere to go with nice trees and lamp-posts, where I can get out into the air and see a lot of people [even though I am too afraid of most of them to interact]. I have been making an effort to stop the drama and climb up out of the cynicism. I sunk pretty deep into cynicism for a while, it made me feel like crap and sucked all the colors from the world. I still hear it in some things that I say or thoughts that I think, but I'm trying to chase it away.

In other news, on the way home today I got pulled over by a cop for rolling through a stop sign, and got a ticket for $75. Seventy-five dollars for rolling through a stop sign on a back road where there were no other cars. >_< The cop looked familiar. I think there is a chance that he was the same cop who stopped Holly & I when we were doing our Christmas Tree Project. Maybe the cop recognized me and decided to spite me for "Christmas tree vandalism." But it probably wasn't him. :P But anyway, so I felt pretty bad and I cried and ate a huge cupcake while writing out my $75 check. -_- Blah. $75 that will not go toward an epic trip to England.

happiness

This weekend my best friend Nikki stayed at my house. We had the brilliant idea of a Disney movie marathon on Saturday night, and so with snacks of epic proportions and a stack of old VHS tapes we began! By 4:00 in the morning we had watched Beauty & the Beast (my all-time favorite... Belle is my hero, the Beast's library is what heaven looks like, and Belle's inventor father reminds me of my awesome dad), Peter Pan, Alladin, and The Little Mermaid. 'Twas amazing. There was much inside-joking and debating over who is the Disney man we most wish were real (probably Alladin). The next morning we woke up and watched Pocahontas, with hot drinks while perfect snow was falling outside.

Annnd... I was really happy! And it was very good. It was one of those moments when I get to say to my heros, "You have awesome lives, but you don't get this perfect moment! And right now I am not jealous of anyone." (well except Belle who gets to go to that FREAKING HUGE LIBRARY every day. :P) And anyway, I realized, that if I am sad, the usual brooding / depressive-ing / angsting will only make it worse. Better solutions may be Disney movies, cookies, friends, dreams, and such. This probably won't stop me from angsting in the future... but it's good to know anyway.

yay

Today = a good day.

i am mean.

Something I kind of just realized is that I am very mean to myself. Most of the time. And it is not good. If I'm depressed, instead of doing something to make myself happier, I wallow while simultaneously yelling at myself: "DON'T YOU DARE GO CRAZY AGAIN! OR ELSE!!" I won't even go into how much I've beaten myself up since age nine because of my OCD. If I am uninspired, I mentally abuse myself for it, calling myself lazy and talentless and unmotivated. Even if I do something small like losing my keys, for example, I yell at myself inside for being careless.

I would never be that unkind to other people, so why should I think it's okay to be mean to myself? Really, in regards to how I treat myself, my mind is a really negative place. And all along I thought it was just the way things were, that I was just born with faulty wiring or something and had to deal with it.

Hm. Not quite sure what to do about this though.

first day of school

The first day of school was good, as first days go. I don't like school, but I have a certain fondness for the first day because I have a thing for new beginnings. Even if last time I was the dull sleepy one in the back, afraid of everything & everyone, this time I can be myself and odd and dynamic. Even if I am patched together and trying so hard not to fall apart - they don't know that. Dressing up in my strange colorful style has made me happy lately and made me feel better about school. Yesterday I found a very old-fashioned tailcoat in the spare room closet, it fits me, so I wore it to school. I daresay I may have looked almost as dashing as Mr. Darcy himself. (:P) I am sure that all the people who glanced / stared oddly at me only did so because they do not have such wonderful thrift-store tailcoats and are jealous.

My Tolkien professor is quite cool. He is from Germany. He's very hilarious. And he did an excellent impression of Gollum! Anyone who can do a good Gollum impression gets major points from me. Also he said that, although it is a literature class, he hates literary theory!! MAJOR BONUS POINTS.

The other class I had was French. I love evading gen-ed requirements so I skipped the first bunch of French classes and landed in the advanced French class. Apparently the class will be conducted all in French, which is rather intimidating. But I understood most of what the professor said today. She seems quite nice. Is from South Africa. Plays the guitar.

I am very reluctant to get deeper into school but I suppose it can't be helped. If I had it my way, things would pretty much stay like the first day.

school?!

School tomorrow? What? -_- I do not want to go back. Consolations are having class with a friend for the first time since high school, a stack of graphic novels for that class, new clothes and a pw bag, and a new set of drawing pens for elaborate doodling.

Especially this year I've basically given up on the idea of college as an Amazing Experience like it was supposed to be. Most of the time I feel disconnected from the place and indifferent to much of the subject matter. I'm an English major but I still don't like literary analysis. I'm really, really glad I did not go to an expensive school, otherwise I would be plagued by guilt about wasting so much money. As it is, it costs practically nothing and I must wait until it is over and try to make the best of it while I'm there. I've very much disliked school since the first day of kindergarten so I shouldn't have expected this would be any different.

Last semester school was pretty good at assuaging the depression. Sitting in a classroom with blue carpets and clean windows with people talking about books made me feel like the world was normal. When lately I have tended to view the world as a worrisome place, the edge of a cliff. In school I can pretend to be a Good Student, pretend that I know what I'm doing, and feel like I'm doing something worthwhile - never mind that I'm usually not doing anything I consider worthwhile at school. It's a good illusion.

AHH OH STOP. I just sunk into negativity again and it came out in melodramatic writing. STOP THERE. Today I am going to be happy. Today I am going to make strange collages on my school notebooks while playing good music. And go outside and look at the trees.

the abandoned theatre part twenty-three

With one less tin heart, I climb onto the ferris wheel and look at the man expectantly, and then he sits next to me. The safety bar falls down in front of us and the ride begins, slowly. We are lifted up, the ferris wheel pulling us toward the sky. For the brief moment when we are at the top, we can look out over the treetops and see the distant ocean and the sun bright above the water. In an instant the world is shining and beautiful. I feel the warm sun on my face. I look at the man and see him smiling too.

Then we are pulled back down again toward the ground. I see the dirt and the corroded metal of the signpost. The empty seats above us block out the sunlight. I see the theatre up ahead, its walls dingy and tagged with graffiti. Then the ride starts to speed up and we are climbing again. Faster and faster. No time to appreciate the view now. We plunge toward the ground and the seat swings as we soar upward again. I am starting to feel sick.

"How do we stop the ride?" I yell above the noise.

"Are we supposed to stop it?" the man yells back.

I think about what the sign said: First you must find out the secret of the wheel. How to stop the wheel? How to slow the wheel down? There's no time to think as the ferris wheel speeds up even more. Our seat is shaking violently and every time we plunge toward the ground I get a shock of fear. I realize that I have been tightly gripping the safety bar. If the ride gets out of control, the safety bar won't be any use.

"I think I might know what to do!" I yell.

I let go of the safety bar, throw my arms into the air, and scream.

a bit of honesty, hesitantly released into the world

I haven't felt like writing at all the past few days. The thought has actually kind of been quite disagreeable. Which is unusual. It's mostly because I've been pretty depressed and haven't felt like doing anything at all but sitting around wasting time, while simultaneously being down on myself for not having any energy or drive. Why am I depressed? It's a shockingly simple reason especially coming from me. Last fall a very close family member passed away. My aunt. And it's selfish for me to be depressed like this... My mom lost her sister and she still tries to be happy and help others... My cousin lost her mother and she still tries to have a positive attitude.

But me? I pretend to be fine in front of everyone else but I spend a lot of time feeling like crap inside. I'm not always pretending... sometimes I really think I'm fine. But then it sneaks up on me again. And eventually the layer of pretending wears thin and I have to admit to myself that I feel like crap. Whine whine whine. SHUT THE FUCK UP... is what I should end up yelling at myself. I waste so much time having pseudo existential crises, fancying I can see the abyss yawning and yadda yadda yadda. I have a predisposition to privately falling apart.

And I'm meant to be the creative sort, right? Don't other people find solace in their art whatever it is? I've written some stories that came directly from this depression. The abandoned theatre helped. But then I hit a wall. And now I am slumped at the bottom of the wall. In a desperate effort to make myself do something when I feel like creativity ran away from me, I dug out my ancient guitar and started trying to teach myself to play it. And honest to God I almost impulse-bought a viola for $350 the other night. I ran through the list of things I do, writing at the top then art, found none of them appealing and decided why the hell not try to learn a new art. I am just desperate to DO SOMETHING, to MOVE, to get energy and excitement for life back again.

And I think this is the most honest thing I have written in a long time.

what is in my head right now.

before walking out the door
the snow & winter sky trees
the viola
adventure possibilities
the magic position (p.wolf)
banking
last hurrahs of vacation
scraping off the sourness

Often I get very frustrated by writing and I start to want a different art to be closer & come easier to me.
Music or painting maybe.
I wish I had musical talent for one thing.
But writing has always been the easiest, the default.
I get angry about the need for plot.
I never plan events in stories. It reminds me of the drudgery of outlining essays in highschool...
What I want to do is capture moments, feelings -
not so much events in sequence.
Because life is not plotted.
If you plot your life, you're one of those Super-Efficient Businesspeople or something who never have any fun. It's not about efficiency.
ARGH.
Maybe I just shouldn't try to think so much when I am not feeling well. I just get depressed and frustrated.

stream of consciousness

I feel like writing but I am not sure what to write.
I am sick :\ and so foggy and unfocused.
I have about three Patrick Wolf songs stuck in my head at the same time.
I was reading Joyce's Ulysses but I found out that I can't really take Ulysses while being sick so I tried some Jane Austen and then a book on eclectic spirituality and finally settled on The Blue Castle for around the eleventh time.

I feel in a bit of a rut with my short story collection
It's going to be a collection of odd slightly surreal stories tied together by a common theme of things that are lost, broken, or forgotten.
These past few months I have spent a lot of time in the land of the lost, in the dark, in the empty place below the heart
So I thought it would help to catalogue the experience in words, the medium I'm most familiar with
To make a map of the nightmare so I could climb out of it.
Like Yeats: "Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
Nightmare cartography would be building a new ladder to climb.

However, the feeling of being empty, at the end of a rope
doesn't lend itself well to story-writing... There's only so much I can do with it.
The worst feeling lacks texture and plot. The scariest feeling is entropy.

Maybe the solution is to write each rung of the ladder
Not just the state where there is no ladder.
It's very difficult
to celebrate the light and honor the dark.
But I think that is the way to go.

If I lived in a world where anything is possible
Where all your decisions are the right decisions
And only you pay for them
What would I do?
Drop out of school and fly to London
Ride the night train up the coast
Call for ghosts on the moors
Find an abandoned cottage to live in
While writing the stories of my heart and learning to play the violin
And scrabbling together artwork from lost scraps?

But there's the matter of responsibility
of needing a degree to get an interesting enough job
to cover the rent and the groceries
So I can enter the world
and my parents can retire and buy a BMW and travel the country.
I've been thinking a lot about economics and whatnot
And what Thoreau said that "most men lead lives of quiet discontent."
I decided long ago never to be one of them
But have I not been quietly discontented for a while now?

Perhaps this is all just adolescent whining
which I should be too old for because I don't have much longer to be a teenager, comparitively.
But I am puzzling over how to make a fantastic life.
I hate that it seems so difficult and complicated.
Maybe I am overlooking something.

the abandoned theatre part twenty-one

When the script is nothing but ashes and the ghosts are gone, I feel myself fading away. He is also starting to fade.

"So this is the exit?" I say.

"No," he says.

I start to worry but before I can think too much, I find myself standing in the field outside the theatre, the one that I formerly only saw through the cracks in the walls. Soon the man appears next to me, holding a piece of paper. I am about to ask him what is written on the paper, but then I see something in the middle of the field. Curious, I start to walk toward it.

It is a ferris wheel, upright and spinning in the middle of the grassy field. It has twelve seats, a number carved on each one along with a picture of an hourglass. There is a small sign sticking into the ground with instructions taped to it:

"WELCOME TO THE FERRIS WHEEL
You thought you had escaped? Wrong.
Burning scripts and embracing the now is all well and good...
But next you must find out the mystery of the wheel...

You must be this tall to ride.
The cost of a ride is something of value to you.
Two to a seat, no more and no less.
Choose your number wisely or foolishly.
It is all up to you."

the abandoned theatre part nineteen

"I am an actor in an abandoned theatre seeking to escape it," he says.

"Really? Me too," I say. "Well, more of a scriptwriter, usually, though I have been known to venture onto the stage. Do you know the way out of here?"

"I found it," he says, "but I think I might forget it soon. We have to hurry. This way."

He starts walking forward and I follow.

"So," he says, "what made you want to escape the theatre?"

"I've been here too long," I say. "Acting gets exhausting after a while, especially when you're surrounded by emptiness."

We keep walking. Then I realize that the light is dimming. I look over my shoulder and realize that the lights along the hallway are going out, one by one. If we don't hurry, we will be cast into darkness, and will never be able to find our way out. We start running.

Just as the last lights are going out, we burst through the door and onto the stage. I feel like I have not been here for ages, and wonder how I spent so much time here before, never venturing beyond the reaches of the empty stage. We go backstage and there, where I left it, sits the script.

"It's the plan for the future," I say.

"I know," he says.

I pick up the script. It feels different from the papers in the filing cabinet room. They were full of meaning, but this script is heavy and the thought of having to read the whole thing fills me with dread. If I don't want to read it, why sentence myself to live it?

I turn to the man and say: "We need to get rid of this script."

the abandoned theatre part seventeen

"Who are you?" says the man now standing next to me.

I start to answer, but then realize that I don't really know. Who am I? The result and sum total of all the memories in the filing cabinet room, all the impressions and feelings of the present, and all the possibilities of the future? Laughter in the sea-wind and sadness amongst frozen branches? Or something else, or something more or less?

The girl in some of the memories in the cabinets would have a definite answer to this question, would give it assertively. But she would overlook some things, the monsters in the shadows, the teeth of ghosts and the fear of an empty filing cabinet.

What can I say? My name, which tells nothing. Where I come from, only the prologue of the story. I can't say where I'm going because I don't know where that will be.

"I don't really know," I reply. "Who are you?"

the abandoned theatre part fifteen

Back in the filing cabinet room, I see a quick flash and then another cabinet is open. Someone else is here... but I can't see him. That means that this room holds everyone's memories, but to me it appears to only hold mine. An endless collection of memories, moments, realizations and disappointments... and what does it all add up to in the end? If I disappear, will all of this disappear too?

The open cabinet reads "What I need most." I must have overlooked this one, or else I surely would have opened it first... A folder now lies on the ground. I open it and read what it says: "Now." When I touch the paper, I am not transported into a memory. I stand where I am in the filing cabinet room. I am here. What I need most is now...

I hear faint footsteps. Whoever opened this cabinet is still in the room, but separated from me. "Hello?" I say. No response. How is it possible to share a room but be so alone? I look at the paper in my hand again and read: "Now." The period at the end seems to lend permanence to the now, usually a transitory state and one that I am afraid of. It is safer and easier to live in the past, which cannot be changed. Now is inconstant and ever-changing with so many opportunities for mistakes.

I take out the note in my pocket and hold it next to the paper. I read aloud the phrase that they form: "I am here Now." For the moment, this is enough.

I follow the footsteps toward the exit. The door has already been opened by my mysterious companion. I step through it and into the dark hallway. Suddenly the door to the filing cabinet room slams shut and merges with the wall - I can't go back. And I realize that there is someone very real standing next to me.

the abandoned theatre part thirteen

Back in the filing cabinet room, the "I tried my best" folder lies open on the floor. I'm not sure what I should do now. I have an urge to take other folders out and explore the secrets they hold... but I am also frightened. Is this messing with time?

I move down the row of filing cabinets and open the one labeled "Moments when the world was yours." I look through the folders and pick one called "Rush of seawater and sunshine." I think I already know what it contains, but I open it anyway and in a flash I stand on a beach amidst the screams of teenagers and seagulls, the wash of the tide and clamor of voices. What the cabinet says is true: the world is theirs. And I am intruding. I touch the note in my pocket and land back in the room.

I am drawn to a cabinet with one of the darker labels. "Monsters in the shadows." Shaking, I take it out and open it. I find myself hovering over a room in the nighttime, where someone sits alone and afraid of the dark world outside the windows. This is a very recent memory and I feel anchored to the scene, and I linger here for a while. Then I start to feel myself being pulled back to the room...

When I am back there, I look down at the piece of paper in the "monsters in the shadows" folder. It holds some interesting, cryptic writing... I read it:

"The cliffside
The space between planets
The shadows under the bed
The broken anchor
The end of a rope
there must be something else
What next?"

the abandoned theatre part eleven

I climb down from the ladder and start walking around the room, curious about what is in each cabinet but unsure where to start looking. I glimpse some interesting labels that I may want to look at: Epiphanies, Moments When the World Was Yours. There are some scary ones that simultaneously repel and attract me: Monsters in the Shadows, Collections of Epitaphs, Bloody-Toothed Ghosts. I realize that every cabinet has a label on it. I can't help but wonder if some contain memories that are not yet memories - the events and feelings of the future. This thought makes me shiver with fear. I hope that the future is not yet contained within these wall-to-wall cabinets.

Finally I decide to pick one. It is labeled "I tried my best..." Inside are a countless number of folders crammed together, each also bearing a label. These labels are stranger: "That time with the raspberry tea," "The silence in the night-wind on a balcony," "You really can't dance like that so don't try again." The one that catches my eye is marked in scribbled handwriting, "Tattered old dreams." I take it out, open it, and grab the first paper in the stack. Suddenly I am blinded by a brilliant white light. A rush of sound fills my ears. Just as I feel like I am about to pass out, the world steadies, the sound subsides, and my vision comes back.

Everything looks both sharper and less harsh than usual. The light has some strange quality that I can't identify. I look around and get a shock to see myself, a few years younger, sitting in a chair in a small room filled with familiar people from the past. I hear myself speak some words that embarass me now in both their naivete and arrogance. However, I can't help but envy the confidence with which they are uttered.

Suddenly my old self turns toward me and a worried expression crosses her face. In that instant I am jolted from the moment and I find myself in another place, another time. I see myself as a child running down a sidewalk as the rain pours down. I am suddenly filled with a desire to be back in the present, and I wonder how to return to the room with the filing cabinets. I stick my hand in my pocket and feel the note that I found on the theatre floor: "I am here." When I take it out and read it, I am suddenly pulled back to the room.

the abandoned theatre part nine

On the other side of the door there is a dark hallway, dimly lit by lantern-fires every few meters. I start to walk forward, carefully. I am afraid but excited. What is at the end? It could be nothing, an empty room or worse, a dead end. Or it could be everything I have always wanted. A world on the other side of the snowflakes. The distillation of moonlight. The characters onstage coming to life. So I walk forward.

I see a door up ahead. It bares an inscription, but in the dark I cannot read it, although I have a feeling it is important. I open the door and am shocked by the brilliant light in the room. I step inside and close the door behind me, shut out the darkness of the hall.

The room is filled with filing cabinets that cover the walls all the way up to the high ceiling. There is a wheeled ladder on each wall. Some of the filing cabinets are grey and nondescript, like in a standard office. Others are made of finely-crafted wood. Some bear intricate paintings, some bright and exuberant and others dark and nightmarish. I am bewildered and overwhelmed, not knowing where to start.

I step toward the nearest filing cabinet and read the tiny label near the handle. It says: "A brief history of life before life." That doesn't help to clear anything up. I read a few more: "Comfort before light," "shock of the world," "the feeling of first laughter." Then I happen to look up and notice something I had not seen before. On the high ceiling there is a tiny bit of text. I can't read it from here so I climb up to the top of one of the ladders and stretch my neck to read it. It says: "Here are your memories. CAUTION: Handle with care."

the abandoned theatre part seven

I cross the stage and notice that the door at the other end of the stage is open. Warily I pass through the doorway and I find myself in a room with three other doors. I feel that someone was just here moments before. A lamp flickers overhead and it is light enough to read the note I have in my pocket. I dig it out, uncrinkle it and read. "I am here." The words make me feel comforted. I repeat them to myself. "I am here." It lets me know that I am alive, still above ground and breathing. A shield against time wrapping its hands around my ankles and pulling me down.

I look at the three doors: another stage door, a windowed door looking into a room with more doors. I try the handles - both unlocked. Easy to pass through. But I walk over to the other door. It is covered in some kind of carvings in a language I don't recognize, along with intricate drawings. I recognize a clock in one of the carvings. Although beautiful, the door looks old, and the handle and keyhole are rusted.

I take the key from my pocket. Nervously, I put it into the keyhole. It fits perfectly. I take a deep breath, turn the key, and open the door.

confusion

fallen apart.
ragged ends.
tired eyes and grating nerves.
exhaustion.
the night terror.
the sadness.
the envy.
the yearning for whoknowswhat.

Back in high school I had very vague goals. Get Into College was one and it was assumed that stuff would fall into place after that. Wrong. I feel like college is only a layover. Waiting at a boring airport for your flight to come in, sitting around reading magazines or walking to the coffee shops. More pointless work.

But I tolerate the layover, the stalemate because it is safe. I don't have to go out into the real world yet and get a real job and find out how to pay for an apartment and food and insurance and AHH. I can stay dependent and safe with the excuse of being a College Student which doesn't mean much to me other than an excuse to put things off. The degree I'll get means nothing to me other than a way of getting some not-miserable job to pay the bills while I am trying to do what I really want to do.

Now I have better goals like these: finish my short story collection by the end of this year, submit writings for publication...

something is missing. There is a big hole. I spend the days circling around the edge of the hole. Being paid at my job to be bored and be polite to people for some hours. Listening to music while doing laundry and envying the lives of the musicians. Going outside and trying to feel like I'm part of the world...

but I don't know which world it is that I want to be a part of. I usually make my own world. It gets lonely sometimes and it makes me forget how to talk to people. Not like I ever really knew how to do that well... at least not to most people.

I need... something. but what.

the abandoned theatre part five

I drop the cold tin heart into my pocket and realize that I am still holding the lighter and the script (except for the first page) in my other hand. Suddenly I want to leave the theatre and I reach to open the door. It won't open and I realize with a shiver that I am locked in.

I hear a noise from backstage - footsteps? Clutching the script, I walk back to the stage and part the curtain. There is no one here, but I see that the first page of the script is missing. In its place has been left a hastily scribbled note, but in the darkness I can't read the messy handwriting. I put the note in the pocket that holds the tin heart, and then my voice escapes my mouth: "Who are you?" The sound is wide and heavy in the empty dustfilled air. It makes me feel even more alone.

Then I realize that there is something else on the ground. I pick it up - an old rusted key. But what is it for? I see the curtains ripple. Is someone here? Is it a ghost, or only me and the pale memories?

I put the script and the lighter down on a table and follow the faint whispers coming from the audience.

the abandoned theatre, part three.

I disappear into the wings, filled with darkness and old costumes sprawled spiderwebbed onto the floor. I take a lighter from my pocket and ignite the miniature flame. In the almost-imaginary light I see it, resting on a dusty tabletop. I walk over and pick it up, hold it up to my face. I squint my eyes and realize it's what I have both been searching for and hiding from... the script.

We were so young when we wrote it, or when it was written for us by other people, gods or devils. The pages are stained by sticky-candy-fingers and papercut-blood. It is heavy in my hands, long and detailed. We wrote every line of how our lives were supposed to be. In the failing light the script was written and our futures were sealed. The rules and stage directions were written and happiness wealth and security were guaranteed...

The flame from the lighter is so close to the page. It would be so easy to burn the whole thing. The curtains are flame-resistant, so the play could still go on. Just not this strict heavy script. The flame snags on the corner of the first page, and I let it fall to the ground and stamp out the fire before it consumes the stage. It would be so easy to destroy the rest of this suffocating script... but what would be lost?

As I am trying to decide, I am startled by a scream, the slamming of a door, and then a loud clang. Someone else must have been in here. I rush out into the audience just in time to see a small wombat jump out of sight. Otherwise the theatre is empty. Something shines on the floor; I pick it up. I hold a silent tin heart in my warm palm.

the abandoned theatre

The ragged spider-ends of motheaten curtains touch a dusty splintered stage. I step over the creaking wood and look out to an audience of empty seats with their stuffing falling out. In the aisles lay discarded programs of past performances, some pictures, a bouquet of dried old flowers tied with a bit of frayed ribbon. The stage lights are dark and blank and I can't look at them for too long. I poke a broken floorboard with the toe of my boot and then walk to the edge of the stage and sit down. I used to trip on these steep stairs and stumble onto the stage. And I used to raise my voice and talk to everyone, back when I knew what I was saying. Now I sit here and watch the stirring in the stale air.

Out of the corner of my eye, for a moment, I think that I see a small platypus shuffling through the aisles, picking up all the lost and broken things.