Going thru the NaNoWriMo-tions

In composing a continuation piece of Looking Towards Blossoming Dreams, I deliberately took to a strategy that is similar to how those taking part in NaNoWriMo. In other words, writing without fine-tuning much. I admit that I did brood over word choice like always, but didn’t proofread and edit 6+ times like I do normally whenever I write a blog entry…or anything for that matter. I thought I’d test myself a bit to see how I could handle it. Unfortunately, I did not achieve my time limit of an hour’s worth of writing. Actually, I overshot that by about 35-40 minutes…A perfectionist attitude makes that near impossible. I won’t really know what it’s like to “suffer” until I seriously take part in NaNoWriMo. That could be as early as next year, as I would have graduated college and might be able to pull it together in a most Ananth-like manner. No doubt I’ll experience similar, if not the same, pitfalls that he is facing. Would be awesome if he won though.

I really should be studying for tomorrow’s Japanese R&W test right now…Instead, I just editted the piece five times…three of which were HTML errors made due to rushing. Yay.

Yume o Saiteru e Miteru #2

Looking Towards Blossoming Dreams #2

“Ittekimasu*,” I muttered just loud enough for my voice to echo a little ways back into my meager one-room mansion*. A robotic, almost lifeless response fluttered back to my ears just before I could shut the door to the place I seemed to call home. “Itterasshai*,” I swear I heard beneath the kissing of the metals that sealed my labode shut behind me. The voice was as unemphatic as my signal of departure was. So, in a strange way, I did not feel as bad for cutting it short. The voice had become destitute over the years of the same unbreakable habit reflecting my past in a most poignant manner in my heart, no longer able to penetrate the world view I had crafted around my heart for a means of protection. The voice was that of falsified mother; a worshipped idol of a mother who had graciously taken care of me in my utter helplessness for so many years in the past; a person I had intentionally broken away from, using the convenient reasoning of sheer obligation to do so in lieu of my college career now setting the pace for my life.

The metal steps leading to the street beneath my feet held up the weight of my body, and creaked audibly beneath my pointed black shoes. I had begun to use the creaking of the steps to inform me if I had somehow incurred a significant increase in my body weight. Though the steps could never add the weight of my thoughts to the rudimentary equation, I was always careful to save my more lofty ponderings for after I had traversed them — up or down, the same precaution applied.

The concrete path to my college rose up, like it always did, to meet me each step of the way. I knew my world, filled with endless blue skies, decorated with the excess cherry blossom leaves of an eternal spring, could never hurt me like the reality of independence that came to me with a godly swiftness. However, I forever was haunted by the self-premonition that even before now, I was drifting even farther away from reality than one, namely a psychiatrist, would find to be healthy. I had never seen a psychiatrist because I was good at playing the part of the silent, serious student that did nothing but keep their nose in the books. In front of my mother, no one could ever be the wiser that though I did study often, I was often reading another one of my romance manga or brooding over another idea I had for a storyline I would somehow disperse through my growing world. This world that had suddenly stopped expanding of its own accord upon my moving into my prepaid-for apartment. As usual, I did not have to lift a finger to make that much happen.

I had sought out other ways of stimulation of my imagination. After 3 years, I was sure to have done quite well in adjusting my psyche to my surroundings. Now that I no longer lived with my mother, I soon found that human contact was necessary to balance this methodology of mine, but college life had made that easily possible. Not too much, not too little was the plan. On the account of me rarely opening my mouth or making eye contact with any of the students, this was also simplistic in maintaining the complexity of this lifestyle.

Thick, inkblotted clouds were visible in the low, mountainous distance through the deep recesses of my tunnel vision. The sky, the sun, I adored so much had fallen quicker into something of a depressed state than I had predicted. Everything was going to my unspoken plans, however. I slowed my autonomous pace. The railroad tracks only meters in front of me would, as per usual, lower their striped arms and obstruct the continuation of my diligent journey to the campus. The hour was still very early, and no one but me and a few elderly persons walking their dogs were on the street. The sky of now aimed to make it seem even moreso night than morning. It was as if the sky itself had the power to turn back time just because of its own awareness of influential prowess over the humans who daily used it as a guide. My relationship with the heavens were more than just faith. I would go as far as to call it love; so much so that I often could not perceive anything more than its expanse.

Today though, there was no love. The cracks that the light from the sun had tempted me with earlier in my futon were now hidden. I watched, standing perfectly still away from the railroad tracks, as the rolling white clouds that drifted above my head meshed together as one, massive body. I shifted my feet a bit, feeling the ground tremble beneath them. I had heard about earthquakes, but the only ones I knew of were the kind initiated by an oncoming train.

My black hair and knee-high cotton skirt, also black with a modest decor of diamond and sphere-shaped studs traveling around its squared-off edges, flailed freely in all directions before my brown eyes, the backdraft of the train catching me from all sides. I instinctively held down my skirt with my free left hand, the other hand gripping the leather strap of my all-purpose handbag. Even in late March, my bare legs still felt the relentless bite of the cold. The train’s passing only made its clamp upon my goosepimpled skin ever more uncomfortable. Common sense told me to stand farther away from the tracks, but I was always compelled to stand as close as I could without being swept away in the current myself. This was the time I could stare without hesitation into the eyes of the passengers through the wide windows. I knew this was an express train heading towards Kyoto; I would be nothing more than a blur to them. I would not remember their faces, nor them mine.

For these moments, I felt safe knowing that there would be no one that could judge me or attempt to see through me. I wished reality was always like this: carefree, untainted, unquestionable, simplistic. Trusting my feet instead of a bike made much more sense. Why rush into reality when there were singular moments like these that so many took for granted — little gaps in the flow of reality, creating a psuedo-sense of escape without the need of one’s imagination. This was all so easy…

Before I came to myself, as was necessary to restart the autonomy of the machine, my feet had already begun carrying me over the tracks on the path I had long since memorized. Enraptured in myself, my sub-consciousness had taken the wheel, using the dissonant ringing of the train as a key signal to proceed towards school. My absentmindness occasionally amazed me, but the power of my of my psyche was dazzling.

I smiled, and I was glad I knew why.

Footnotes

*= I’m leaving and will come back

*= The Japanese name for what Americans call a “studio.”

*= As you go, you are welcome back

// Read Yume o Saiteru e Miteru #1 //

Currently Listening To: Utada Hikaru – Ultra Blue – “Blue”