foreword

I stand firm in my assertion that cats are evil and they want to take over the world.

And that Rocky is a wuss because he gets bullied by them.

And that this vacation has been long overdue.

And that it sucks not to be able to eat ice cream or anything cold during the darned monthly.

Or drink my green tea frappuccino.

There is an apple on my table. I’m wondering what it’ll look like by the end of next month. All dried up with wrinkles, or maybe a little deflated. It’s been here since February 23rd, by the way. This year, not the year before – for those who were wondering. It’s interesting, the different possibilities of the fate of an uneaten apple. My mom might find it’s been sitting there for far too long and decide to throw it away. Maybe it’ll get bored and roll itself off my table to come to a really messy end. Or just a dent on its side. Who knows?

Worms will make it interesting though. Hmmm.

The rushing in of sensations, like too much water in a narrow pipe as you cut through the cool air – so overwhelming that you would be utterly content to feel nothing but the numbness of your floating body, the wind flushing away any lingering hint of thought: the moss-covered walls with their cracks hidden away with the shadows of growing decay – but still unstable; the existing circumstances covering the ground that you can’t seem to hide away, that you can’t stop yourself from seeing; the birth of – yet again – another plant, not knowing how it would flourish on said ground… While you sweep by the forests under the ghastly stare of the moon and its modern counterparts, oblivious to what they see and what they contain.

‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,’ he said, ‘shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.’

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The screams of Velcro strips on my bag as I open it echoing through the carriages – that was what made me realize how empty the train was. Barely two or three people in every carriage, not enough to breathe the growls of the traveling snake in, not enough to suck in the plastic air tweening with a very slight pinch of dust.

Almost empty of people, but not necessarily lacking in life – liveliness – and sometimes the loudest of noises can be so quiet;

So quiet that my thoughts could ring out, deeply magnified by the book I was reading such that they were practically materializing in front of my eyes. Thoughts made so much more frustrating by the fact that they could not be figured out; they could not be un-jumbled until they happened; most of all because they could not be put away in a box (to be sent for recycling, of course).

And there I sat, breathing everything in.

I have nothing to write – it is not my business to be here.

But here I am nonetheless, therefore I shall write about nothing.

I like my socks. I really do. I buy the really low ones, that serve only to cover my feet, and I have become accustomed to them. I also like buying them, and I buy them in sets from places like Citrusox. I think you spell it that way. You know how they sell them cheaper in a bunch, like ’4 for $10′? I like buying them in bunches because many new socks give a nice feeling. But with good things always come the bad. Somehow no matter how many bunches of socks I buy, I am always left with 2 pairs of socks. I do not like the feeling this gives. New socks give a nice feeling, but no socks give a bad feeling. It is disturbing.

I have a feeling the washing machine has something to do with this. Very, very bad feeling.