- They have 8 legs and science has proven that 4 or 2 legs generally work pretty well (e.g. ducks, marmots), therefore spiders are inefficient.
- All legs come out of one hole, which, maybe I'm overeducated, but it seems like the disturbing abyss of the Lacanian Real trying to establish contact with and infiltrate the orders of the Symbolic and the Imaginary. Eesh.
- Some legs point forwards, some point backwards.
- Fur is a possibility despite the presence of an exoskeleton. These spiders seem to be mammal and arachnid at the same time, fitting neatly under the Renaissance definition of a monster.
- They could crawl into my ear as I sleep and lay eggs in there, and then I would wake up with spiders in my ear. (I know this is begging the question--deal with it).
7.4.09
À propos de rien
An Incomplete List of Reasons I Don't Like Spiders
22.3.09
"The problems I think about aren't very interesting."
"Les problèmes auxquels je pense ne sont pas très intéressants."
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
Jeremy was cleaning up his garage when he saw Tilda Swinton. He considered the situation and decided it was a ridiculous proposition, but a delayed double-take confirmed his previous assessment. Tilda Swinton was hard to mistake, especially for someone whose girlfriend had made him see that Narnia movie twice in the theater.
Swinton was approaching quickly, swathed entirely in cornflower blue jersey; the drastic change in height that results from movement and optical perspective contributed to her frighteningly tall stature. She was a physical paradox of a woman: elfin but imposing. Expressionless yet ominous. Familiar yet foreign. Jeremy wasn’t sure what to do, but his impression was that holding a stack of newspapers from August 20051 was probably not the correct answer.
Upon her arrival at the threshold of the garage, she achieved a small, close-lipped smile and produced a quick wave. Jeremy had remained frozen as if encased in carbonite, an allusion he made only because Return of the Jedi was being shown on TBS at the present moment but his girlfriend had demanded he get to work on the garage. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have thought of it. He stood motionless, staring. This was his standard action when being confronted with the presence of Swinton; this particular situation included among its deviations the fact that she was not projected onto a screen, and he was not in a dark theater begrudging the $12 he had spent on concessions for his girlfriend.
“Is your mother around?” she asked with her British inflection, where the end of the question goes down instead of up. The casualness of such a question frightened him. Another paradox. He answered briefly—no, she wasn’t—but truthfully. His mother lived in the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area and he called only when he had trouble finding items at the grocery store.
“Would you ask her a question for me?” This time his response was a lie. He had no desire to talk to his mother, but every desire to find out what Swinton had to say. “Would you ask her why she didn’t respond to the latest e-mail she received from a man?” He briefly and spasmodically furrowed and unfurrowed his brows. “Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,”--whew, clarification--“would you ask your mother why she didn’t respond to the latest e-mail she received from a man?” What the hell? Since when was his mother shunning the advances of men? Since when was his mother even in the same zip code as advances from men? Since when did Swinton concern herself with the personal correspondences of middle-aged medical receptionists in northern metropolises?
He agreed to give her a call; whether this statement was true was beyond him. For the next two hours, he continued to clean the garage with the same vigor with which he had cleaned B.S.2, which was to say without any. For the next two months, he continued his life with the same vigor with which he had continued it B.S.3, which was to say without any. He never told anyone about the incident, nor did he ask his mother about her e-mail. From time to time he couldn't help but wonder what Swinton had meant. He upgraded his Netflix subscription to the ultra-exclusive 20-at-a-time plan. Adaptation. Michael Clayton. Broken Flowers (his girlfriend considered that one a personal victory). Vanilla Sky. Burn After Reading (he checked the IMDb page several times throughout the course of the movie to make sure the crap he was watching was indeed by the same guys who did The Big Lebowski). He then moved on to her earlier work: Orlando. Degrees of Blindness. Conceiving Ada.
He kept copious notes and revised them weekly. Dialogue, motivation, context. He was becoming Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind--he added that to his queue as a welcome respite from all the Swinton. No amount of careful study elucidated her cryptically familiar question.
----
"You're right," the author said to her friend. "The problems I think about aren't very interesting."
"Well," he paused to take a bite of his sandwich, "that's why you'll never be a writer."
THE END.
1His present action.
2Before Swinton.
3Ibid.
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
Jeremy was cleaning up his garage when he saw Tilda Swinton. He considered the situation and decided it was a ridiculous proposition, but a delayed double-take confirmed his previous assessment. Tilda Swinton was hard to mistake, especially for someone whose girlfriend had made him see that Narnia movie twice in the theater.
Swinton was approaching quickly, swathed entirely in cornflower blue jersey; the drastic change in height that results from movement and optical perspective contributed to her frighteningly tall stature. She was a physical paradox of a woman: elfin but imposing. Expressionless yet ominous. Familiar yet foreign. Jeremy wasn’t sure what to do, but his impression was that holding a stack of newspapers from August 20051 was probably not the correct answer.
Upon her arrival at the threshold of the garage, she achieved a small, close-lipped smile and produced a quick wave. Jeremy had remained frozen as if encased in carbonite, an allusion he made only because Return of the Jedi was being shown on TBS at the present moment but his girlfriend had demanded he get to work on the garage. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have thought of it. He stood motionless, staring. This was his standard action when being confronted with the presence of Swinton; this particular situation included among its deviations the fact that she was not projected onto a screen, and he was not in a dark theater begrudging the $12 he had spent on concessions for his girlfriend.
“Is your mother around?” she asked with her British inflection, where the end of the question goes down instead of up. The casualness of such a question frightened him. Another paradox. He answered briefly—no, she wasn’t—but truthfully. His mother lived in the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area and he called only when he had trouble finding items at the grocery store.
“Would you ask her a question for me?” This time his response was a lie. He had no desire to talk to his mother, but every desire to find out what Swinton had to say. “Would you ask her why she didn’t respond to the latest e-mail she received from a man?” He briefly and spasmodically furrowed and unfurrowed his brows. “Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,”--whew, clarification--“would you ask your mother why she didn’t respond to the latest e-mail she received from a man?” What the hell? Since when was his mother shunning the advances of men? Since when was his mother even in the same zip code as advances from men? Since when did Swinton concern herself with the personal correspondences of middle-aged medical receptionists in northern metropolises?
He agreed to give her a call; whether this statement was true was beyond him. For the next two hours, he continued to clean the garage with the same vigor with which he had cleaned B.S.2, which was to say without any. For the next two months, he continued his life with the same vigor with which he had continued it B.S.3, which was to say without any. He never told anyone about the incident, nor did he ask his mother about her e-mail. From time to time he couldn't help but wonder what Swinton had meant. He upgraded his Netflix subscription to the ultra-exclusive 20-at-a-time plan. Adaptation. Michael Clayton. Broken Flowers (his girlfriend considered that one a personal victory). Vanilla Sky. Burn After Reading (he checked the IMDb page several times throughout the course of the movie to make sure the crap he was watching was indeed by the same guys who did The Big Lebowski). He then moved on to her earlier work: Orlando. Degrees of Blindness. Conceiving Ada.
He kept copious notes and revised them weekly. Dialogue, motivation, context. He was becoming Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind--he added that to his queue as a welcome respite from all the Swinton. No amount of careful study elucidated her cryptically familiar question.
----
"You're right," the author said to her friend. "The problems I think about aren't very interesting."
"Well," he paused to take a bite of his sandwich, "that's why you'll never be a writer."
THE END.
1His present action.
2Before Swinton.
3Ibid.
16.3.09
"2006 was the year she left the university."
"C'est en 2006 qu'elle a quitté l'université."
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
The little grey box popped up, telling her she had tried to make an illegal move—she had clicked on the 8 of spades, not the 3. It was difficult to see the cards through her tears. She wiped her eyes clumsily with the back of her hand and looked for a black 3. It was buried under five other cards; it would take a while to clear. Just one more fucking thing for her to deal with.
It was her nightly ritual. She took a shower and rolled her eyes at any sort of literary interpretation of cleansing. Still wrapped in her towel, hair dripping down her back, she sat at her computer and played Freecell, mechanically, rhythmically. It was usually only three or four games before the tears would start, mostly silently; only occasionally a violent intake of breath would indicate a cadence, and this action had the general effect that she became aware of her situation and was immediately ashamed for crying alone in her apartment.
She never ceased clicking away at the game.
This session
Won: 33
Lost: 45
Longest Streak: 7 wins
Once the clock reached midnight, she promised herself only one more game before bed. Every night. One more game. One more win. One more streak of five wins. It was a reflex to hit the ‘play again’ button. She didn’t even want to. But she did. It was the only productivity she could manage. God, how pathetic. One in the morning. One-thirty. Eventually the tears stopped, but only for purely physical reasons. The motivation remained.
She paused to line her toothbrush with toothpaste, but even then she returned to her game, brushing absentmindedly as she cleared the slots.
Forty-five minutes later, she put on her pajamas.
After she had finally achieved one last streak of three wins, she found the strength to close the game.
She set her computer to standby and lay in bed, trying a multitude of different positions. Nothing was comfortable. But of course—she didn’t deserve to be happy while awake, she didn’t deserve to fall asleep, she didn’t deserve to have a few hours away from the corporeal pain that was the appropriate literary accompaniment to the emotional pain she felt.
God, she hated literature. Nothing was ever what it was; it was all metaphor, motivation, causation. Author’s intent. Subtext. It wasn’t enough to recognize something and celebrate it for its beauty. Instead, you had to dissect it. Shred its innards. Manipulate them. Force them into something they weren’t. And guess what? When you’re done, some guy wearing a bowtie who forgets every day to roll down his pant leg from his bike ride to campus will take great pleasure in telling you all the ways in which you’re wrong. Because Rimbaud’s Bateau ivre was, in fact, a canoe. Obviously. That was the point of the poem.
So she tossed and turned and tried not to look at the clock. That’s what they told insomniacs: looking at the clock only makes you more frustrated. She nearly snorted when she recalled that—as if she could feel any more frustrated. She continued down the checklist on her mental pamphlet of Coping With Insomnia. Box number two: if it’s been more than thirty minutes and you haven’t fallen asleep, get out of bed and do a quiet activity for a little bit before trying again.
This was cause for a snort as well. Even with a generous dosage of NyQuil, it took over an hour for her to finally relax enough to crash into a fitful sleep. It had been this way as long as she could remember. She had been the only 6-year-old that suffered from insomnia. If there was one thing her parents had taught her, it was that her judgment couldn’t be trusted and that every decision in life should be agonized over, replayed in her head ad infinitum, even after les jeux had been faits. She absorbed this quickly and wholly. Always the diligent and capable scholar. A+.
3:42. She rose from bed and returned to the computer, resuming the cycle of play.
This session
Won: 171
Lost: 217
Longest Streak: 8 wins.
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
The little grey box popped up, telling her she had tried to make an illegal move—she had clicked on the 8 of spades, not the 3. It was difficult to see the cards through her tears. She wiped her eyes clumsily with the back of her hand and looked for a black 3. It was buried under five other cards; it would take a while to clear. Just one more fucking thing for her to deal with.
It was her nightly ritual. She took a shower and rolled her eyes at any sort of literary interpretation of cleansing. Still wrapped in her towel, hair dripping down her back, she sat at her computer and played Freecell, mechanically, rhythmically. It was usually only three or four games before the tears would start, mostly silently; only occasionally a violent intake of breath would indicate a cadence, and this action had the general effect that she became aware of her situation and was immediately ashamed for crying alone in her apartment.
She never ceased clicking away at the game.
This session
Won: 33
Lost: 45
Longest Streak: 7 wins
Once the clock reached midnight, she promised herself only one more game before bed. Every night. One more game. One more win. One more streak of five wins. It was a reflex to hit the ‘play again’ button. She didn’t even want to. But she did. It was the only productivity she could manage. God, how pathetic. One in the morning. One-thirty. Eventually the tears stopped, but only for purely physical reasons. The motivation remained.
She paused to line her toothbrush with toothpaste, but even then she returned to her game, brushing absentmindedly as she cleared the slots.
Forty-five minutes later, she put on her pajamas.
After she had finally achieved one last streak of three wins, she found the strength to close the game.
She set her computer to standby and lay in bed, trying a multitude of different positions. Nothing was comfortable. But of course—she didn’t deserve to be happy while awake, she didn’t deserve to fall asleep, she didn’t deserve to have a few hours away from the corporeal pain that was the appropriate literary accompaniment to the emotional pain she felt.
God, she hated literature. Nothing was ever what it was; it was all metaphor, motivation, causation. Author’s intent. Subtext. It wasn’t enough to recognize something and celebrate it for its beauty. Instead, you had to dissect it. Shred its innards. Manipulate them. Force them into something they weren’t. And guess what? When you’re done, some guy wearing a bowtie who forgets every day to roll down his pant leg from his bike ride to campus will take great pleasure in telling you all the ways in which you’re wrong. Because Rimbaud’s Bateau ivre was, in fact, a canoe. Obviously. That was the point of the poem.
So she tossed and turned and tried not to look at the clock. That’s what they told insomniacs: looking at the clock only makes you more frustrated. She nearly snorted when she recalled that—as if she could feel any more frustrated. She continued down the checklist on her mental pamphlet of Coping With Insomnia. Box number two: if it’s been more than thirty minutes and you haven’t fallen asleep, get out of bed and do a quiet activity for a little bit before trying again.
This was cause for a snort as well. Even with a generous dosage of NyQuil, it took over an hour for her to finally relax enough to crash into a fitful sleep. It had been this way as long as she could remember. She had been the only 6-year-old that suffered from insomnia. If there was one thing her parents had taught her, it was that her judgment couldn’t be trusted and that every decision in life should be agonized over, replayed in her head ad infinitum, even after les jeux had been faits. She absorbed this quickly and wholly. Always the diligent and capable scholar. A+.
3:42. She rose from bed and returned to the computer, resuming the cycle of play.
This session
Won: 171
Lost: 217
Longest Streak: 8 wins.
15.3.09
"Do you know who's coming tonight?"
"Est-ce que tu sais qui vient ce soir?"
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
He insisted on the proper Latin plurals--penes, vaginae, clitorides--but she didn't let that get in the way of her enjoyment of the orgy.
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
He insisted on the proper Latin plurals--penes, vaginae, clitorides--but she didn't let that get in the way of her enjoyment of the orgy.
8.3.09
"She never says what she needs."
"Elle ne dit jamais ce dont elle a besoin."
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
So he bought her a WaterPik for her birthday.
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
So he bought her a WaterPik for her birthday.
6.3.09
"Even when she was silent, he always knew what she was thinking about."
"Même quand elle était silencieuse, il savait toujours ce dont elle pensait."
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
She was hunched over in the cramped Parisian bathroom, scrubbing the stain out of her skirt. She had asked him to tell her when he was almost there so she could adequately prepare with tissues, but like usual he didn't say anything. Was it an honest mistake? Did he do it out of spite? She wouldn't put it past him to do it out of spite. Right now the only thing she didn't hate about French hotel bathrooms was the handheld shower head, which made stain removal slightly more tolerable.
He, meanwhile, was sprawled on the bed, flipping through the channels, not lingering more than a few seconds on any one because he didn't understand the language of the broadcast. After completing the cycle twice, he came upon something he had missed the first time: oddly-tanned Europeans fucking in a park. 3 of them (of which 2 were men wearing white sneakers). Free porn à la française. He thought she might find it funny, so he started to describe it to her with careful attention to the exact placement of the tan lines and the grooming of pubic hair. He loved pointing out the details that made most people uncomfortable.
The only response that came from the bathroom was the drone of the water. Even when she was silent, he always knew what she was thinking. She must be doubled over with laughter.
She wasn't doubled over with laughter. She was seething. This porn dictation was the salt vigorously rubbed in the wound created by a semen stain on her skirt. These past two weeks had made her reconsider their relationship. She was studying abroad; he surprised her with a visit. As a result, she spent every spare minute being his tour guide and interpreter. She had to go Dutch on a hotel room because her dorm forbid male guests, and he had pleaded with her over the fact that he didn't feel comfortable staying by himself in a hotel in a country where he didn't speak the language (the fact that every single hotel receptionist in Paris speaks at least a passable English meant nothing to him). It wasn't a job she would have minded, in principle; but put into practice, it made her realize how absolutely, functionally stupid he was.
She had developed an interest in him several months earlier; they would sit for hours at a coffee shop downtown and he would listen to her as she spilled her thoughts. He listened without judgment. It definitely wasn't love; it was whatever drives people to develop feelings for their therapists. Dependence mixed with curiosity, she had guessed. They had rarely ventured outside of the coffee shop and its proverbial Freudian couch. Now, out in the world, she noticed all sorts of things that showed his ostensible solipsism: he didn't watch where he was going. He talked too loudly. He tried using his high school Spanish to communicate with the person at the metro guichet when he had stupidly put his ticket in the machine incorrectly and it didn't work.
But none of this compared to what he had said other day while they were seated at a restaurant. These past two months abroad had been difficult, she had explained. French people aren't easy to befriend. The headmistress of the dorm was an Anti-Semitic Pétainiste. The man at the sandwich shop made fun of her when she asked him to repeat what he had said. A homeless man on the subway said her curly hair made her look "too Jewish." In short, she was homesick.
His response: it's all in your head. It's impossible, incomprehensible even, to hate springtime in Paris. Quit your bitching and get over it. Then he took a bite of his croque-monsieur, and as melted cheese and béchamel dripped down the site of his face, he made that characteristic grimace she had grown to loathe.
All of this was at the front of her mind as she left the bathroom. She put on a pair of pajama pants and sat next to him on the bed. "I'm jealous of you that you get to go home in a few hours," she said. He didn't look at her. "Envious," he corrected her, as always, "and I think you're crazy." She chose to ignore this. "The first thing we should do when I return is go to that one restaurant downtown and get some beet chips. And a tall Dinkelacker. French beer is shit."
He set down the remote. "Yeah...we should probably talk about that."
We need to talk--she noted the inherent paradox. A call for discourse, when in fact the mere utterance of those words was sufficient. An implication of self and other as subject, when in fact the other is deprived of enunciation. There was another paradox, this one not inspired by all the coursework she had completed toward her literature major: while only a few minutes earlier she was creating a mental list of all the ways she hated him, after hearing these words she was on the verge of tears.
"I don't understand," was all she could say without breaking down. Crying in front of him was the last thing she wanted to do.
"We don't have good chemistry." He was always going on about his fucking chemistry. "I can't be with someone who doesn't appreciate the opportunities they've been given."
She nearly snorted at his hypocrisy--there were too many instances to mention. Instead, she let it go. "How long have you known this?"
"It's been about a month now." That meant he had already decided to break up with her before he left the US. "It's been a bittersweet vacation," was his only explanation.
That was the last straw. All of the frustration she had put up with over the past two weeks--and he knew the entire time that he was going to break up with her mere hours before his return flight left? She lost it. She sobbed harder than she could remember ever having sobbed. She hated him for taking advantage of her. She hated herself for letting herself be taken advantage of. She hated Paris for its uppity service-level employees, unaccommodating restrooms, smoky streets, stupid game shows, and saturation with Ugly American tourists. She hated the unfavorable Euro/Dollar exchange rate. She hated the dry baguettes that nearly made her choke every time she attempted to eat one. She hated that ugly uvular fricative R uttered countless times in each sentence--an entire country of people trying to hock a loogey, she thought at this moment. She hated Baudelaire's sad-sack poetry. She hated herself for not breaking up with him first. She hated an infinite number of indefinable things. She clung to her tissue and cried violently...
*****
...it was as if she had awoken from a coma. She had no idea how long she had cried; the best she could do was estimate from the number of tissues inundating the bed. He had made no attempt to disturb her in this state. Instead, he had continued to watch the porn channel, not for any sexual purpose, but rather in a didactic way: this is how Europeans fuck. She sat up; this sudden movement inspired him to move his hand to her knee, but she promptly swatted it away. She sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments; then, the phone rang and she was forced to answer it.
"Allô mademoiselle, le taxi est arrivé."
"D'accord, il descend. Merci." She hung up the phone and turned to him, carefully avoiding his eyes. "Taxi's here." She stood with her arms crossed as he got his things together. He unlocked the door and paused. No, no, no--her silent prayer--but he did it anyway: he pulled her into his arms.
This proximity of two bodies, this forced confrontation that denied everything she had begun to cope with over the past couple hours, broke her all over again. She sobbed into his shoulder. He allowed this for a few seconds, then whispered, "I have to go." And he went.
She locked the door behind him and went to the bathroom to check on her skirt. Still damp. She crawled into the bathtub, content for once that French bathrooms inexplicably shunned shower stalls, and cried herself to sleep.
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
She was hunched over in the cramped Parisian bathroom, scrubbing the stain out of her skirt. She had asked him to tell her when he was almost there so she could adequately prepare with tissues, but like usual he didn't say anything. Was it an honest mistake? Did he do it out of spite? She wouldn't put it past him to do it out of spite. Right now the only thing she didn't hate about French hotel bathrooms was the handheld shower head, which made stain removal slightly more tolerable.
He, meanwhile, was sprawled on the bed, flipping through the channels, not lingering more than a few seconds on any one because he didn't understand the language of the broadcast. After completing the cycle twice, he came upon something he had missed the first time: oddly-tanned Europeans fucking in a park. 3 of them (of which 2 were men wearing white sneakers). Free porn à la française. He thought she might find it funny, so he started to describe it to her with careful attention to the exact placement of the tan lines and the grooming of pubic hair. He loved pointing out the details that made most people uncomfortable.
The only response that came from the bathroom was the drone of the water. Even when she was silent, he always knew what she was thinking. She must be doubled over with laughter.
She wasn't doubled over with laughter. She was seething. This porn dictation was the salt vigorously rubbed in the wound created by a semen stain on her skirt. These past two weeks had made her reconsider their relationship. She was studying abroad; he surprised her with a visit. As a result, she spent every spare minute being his tour guide and interpreter. She had to go Dutch on a hotel room because her dorm forbid male guests, and he had pleaded with her over the fact that he didn't feel comfortable staying by himself in a hotel in a country where he didn't speak the language (the fact that every single hotel receptionist in Paris speaks at least a passable English meant nothing to him). It wasn't a job she would have minded, in principle; but put into practice, it made her realize how absolutely, functionally stupid he was.
She had developed an interest in him several months earlier; they would sit for hours at a coffee shop downtown and he would listen to her as she spilled her thoughts. He listened without judgment. It definitely wasn't love; it was whatever drives people to develop feelings for their therapists. Dependence mixed with curiosity, she had guessed. They had rarely ventured outside of the coffee shop and its proverbial Freudian couch. Now, out in the world, she noticed all sorts of things that showed his ostensible solipsism: he didn't watch where he was going. He talked too loudly. He tried using his high school Spanish to communicate with the person at the metro guichet when he had stupidly put his ticket in the machine incorrectly and it didn't work.
But none of this compared to what he had said other day while they were seated at a restaurant. These past two months abroad had been difficult, she had explained. French people aren't easy to befriend. The headmistress of the dorm was an Anti-Semitic Pétainiste. The man at the sandwich shop made fun of her when she asked him to repeat what he had said. A homeless man on the subway said her curly hair made her look "too Jewish." In short, she was homesick.
His response: it's all in your head. It's impossible, incomprehensible even, to hate springtime in Paris. Quit your bitching and get over it. Then he took a bite of his croque-monsieur, and as melted cheese and béchamel dripped down the site of his face, he made that characteristic grimace she had grown to loathe.
All of this was at the front of her mind as she left the bathroom. She put on a pair of pajama pants and sat next to him on the bed. "I'm jealous of you that you get to go home in a few hours," she said. He didn't look at her. "Envious," he corrected her, as always, "and I think you're crazy." She chose to ignore this. "The first thing we should do when I return is go to that one restaurant downtown and get some beet chips. And a tall Dinkelacker. French beer is shit."
He set down the remote. "Yeah...we should probably talk about that."
We need to talk--she noted the inherent paradox. A call for discourse, when in fact the mere utterance of those words was sufficient. An implication of self and other as subject, when in fact the other is deprived of enunciation. There was another paradox, this one not inspired by all the coursework she had completed toward her literature major: while only a few minutes earlier she was creating a mental list of all the ways she hated him, after hearing these words she was on the verge of tears.
"I don't understand," was all she could say without breaking down. Crying in front of him was the last thing she wanted to do.
"We don't have good chemistry." He was always going on about his fucking chemistry. "I can't be with someone who doesn't appreciate the opportunities they've been given."
She nearly snorted at his hypocrisy--there were too many instances to mention. Instead, she let it go. "How long have you known this?"
"It's been about a month now." That meant he had already decided to break up with her before he left the US. "It's been a bittersweet vacation," was his only explanation.
That was the last straw. All of the frustration she had put up with over the past two weeks--and he knew the entire time that he was going to break up with her mere hours before his return flight left? She lost it. She sobbed harder than she could remember ever having sobbed. She hated him for taking advantage of her. She hated herself for letting herself be taken advantage of. She hated Paris for its uppity service-level employees, unaccommodating restrooms, smoky streets, stupid game shows, and saturation with Ugly American tourists. She hated the unfavorable Euro/Dollar exchange rate. She hated the dry baguettes that nearly made her choke every time she attempted to eat one. She hated that ugly uvular fricative R uttered countless times in each sentence--an entire country of people trying to hock a loogey, she thought at this moment. She hated Baudelaire's sad-sack poetry. She hated herself for not breaking up with him first. She hated an infinite number of indefinable things. She clung to her tissue and cried violently...
*****
...it was as if she had awoken from a coma. She had no idea how long she had cried; the best she could do was estimate from the number of tissues inundating the bed. He had made no attempt to disturb her in this state. Instead, he had continued to watch the porn channel, not for any sexual purpose, but rather in a didactic way: this is how Europeans fuck. She sat up; this sudden movement inspired him to move his hand to her knee, but she promptly swatted it away. She sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments; then, the phone rang and she was forced to answer it.
"Allô mademoiselle, le taxi est arrivé."
"D'accord, il descend. Merci." She hung up the phone and turned to him, carefully avoiding his eyes. "Taxi's here." She stood with her arms crossed as he got his things together. He unlocked the door and paused. No, no, no--her silent prayer--but he did it anyway: he pulled her into his arms.
This proximity of two bodies, this forced confrontation that denied everything she had begun to cope with over the past couple hours, broke her all over again. She sobbed into his shoulder. He allowed this for a few seconds, then whispered, "I have to go." And he went.
She locked the door behind him and went to the bathroom to check on her skirt. Still damp. She crawled into the bathtub, content for once that French bathrooms inexplicably shunned shower stalls, and cried herself to sleep.
26.2.09
"She told me everything that had happened before their divorce."
"Elle m'a raconté tout ce qui s'était passé avant leur divorce."
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
The car ride to the grocery store was silent, punctuated only by the low hum of the air conditioner. When they arrived, he strode ahead purposefully, not bothering to wait for her as she chose the cart. She always tried two or three before making her final decision, due to the Murphy's Law of misaligned grocery cart wheels. She always pushed the cart; that was her job. His was to choose the most cost-efficient brand of the items on the list. She couldn't be trusted to quickly and correctly calculate the price per ounce on the canned corn; do you know how many dollars per year you can save if you always buy the cheapest canned corn? It adds up.
She couldn't be trusted with anything regarding money.
Despite the precise organization of the list consisting of items inscribed in perfect cursive in the exact order in which they appeared in the store relative to the beginning and end of their path, he insisted on meticulously passing through each aisle. Salsa was stocked in many places--with the ethnic foods, with the chips, and with the assortment of dips crafted in-house--and he refused to let this chaotic arrangement trick him out of his hard-earned paycheck. Trips to the store consequently took over an hour on average. While the inefficiency of such a system frustrated her almost to tears, he secretly enjoyed the side effect that she would have less time to watch TV or talk to her mother on the phone.
On this particular trip, she felt empty; after several months of marriage, she had finally resigned herself to the fact that grocery shopping, which had been the most pleasurable of the household tasks when she was single, was now a chore that wasn't worth the grief their union made of it.
They continued up and down every aisle in their usual fashion. The only aisles he refused to visit were those that housed the health and beauty products; neither of them had need for such things beside the bulk packaging of Ivory soap he bought every few months. When they got to aisle 10, which she had jokingly called in her single days the "miracle of life" aisle due to the complete narrative arc of feminine hygiene to condoms to pregnancy tests to diapers and formula, she stopped the cart. This was the sole bit of power accorded to her on the trips. He continued for a few steps, then, realizing the incessant squeak of the cart's wheel had stopped following him, turned around to glare at her.
She was halfway down the aisle and had already selected the name-brand multipack of tampons: 36 super, 36 regular flow, and 18 light, all conveniently color-coded for those moments when cramps and headaches inevitably deprived one of all but the most basic recognition skills. He picked up the cardboard box and asked her how much it was going to cost them. "$7.39." She refused to break their icy gaze. He silently put the box back on the shelf and grabbed the store brand containing only had one strength (which might as well have been labeled "steel wool," since that's what it felt like). "We don't need to be wasting money on frivolities when the generic brand does the job just as well." She paused for a second, noting not-so-insignificantly that this was the closest he had ever come to referencing her period, or indeed any needs she had as a woman.
This revelation hit her. She took the generic brand and put it back on the shelf, echoing the confrontational gesture he had just made. As soon as she had picked up the original package, he ripped it out of her hands; instinctively, she grabbed it back and threw it down the aisle and into the next, where it landed, crumpled, next to the multivitamins. To punctuate this gesture, she shoved the cart, where it hit him square in what she considered to be the fleshy manifestation of all of his narcissistic tendencies.
He was too stunned to move.
She stormed out of the store into the dark embrace of the night.
"That was the instant I knew I had to leave him or else I would die." She took a sip of wine. The TV droned on in the background. "Less than a week later, we appeared in court."
I considered this for a second and turned back to that reality show about the Kardashians. Kim was at it again.
Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."
The car ride to the grocery store was silent, punctuated only by the low hum of the air conditioner. When they arrived, he strode ahead purposefully, not bothering to wait for her as she chose the cart. She always tried two or three before making her final decision, due to the Murphy's Law of misaligned grocery cart wheels. She always pushed the cart; that was her job. His was to choose the most cost-efficient brand of the items on the list. She couldn't be trusted to quickly and correctly calculate the price per ounce on the canned corn; do you know how many dollars per year you can save if you always buy the cheapest canned corn? It adds up.
She couldn't be trusted with anything regarding money.
Despite the precise organization of the list consisting of items inscribed in perfect cursive in the exact order in which they appeared in the store relative to the beginning and end of their path, he insisted on meticulously passing through each aisle. Salsa was stocked in many places--with the ethnic foods, with the chips, and with the assortment of dips crafted in-house--and he refused to let this chaotic arrangement trick him out of his hard-earned paycheck. Trips to the store consequently took over an hour on average. While the inefficiency of such a system frustrated her almost to tears, he secretly enjoyed the side effect that she would have less time to watch TV or talk to her mother on the phone.
On this particular trip, she felt empty; after several months of marriage, she had finally resigned herself to the fact that grocery shopping, which had been the most pleasurable of the household tasks when she was single, was now a chore that wasn't worth the grief their union made of it.
They continued up and down every aisle in their usual fashion. The only aisles he refused to visit were those that housed the health and beauty products; neither of them had need for such things beside the bulk packaging of Ivory soap he bought every few months. When they got to aisle 10, which she had jokingly called in her single days the "miracle of life" aisle due to the complete narrative arc of feminine hygiene to condoms to pregnancy tests to diapers and formula, she stopped the cart. This was the sole bit of power accorded to her on the trips. He continued for a few steps, then, realizing the incessant squeak of the cart's wheel had stopped following him, turned around to glare at her.
She was halfway down the aisle and had already selected the name-brand multipack of tampons: 36 super, 36 regular flow, and 18 light, all conveniently color-coded for those moments when cramps and headaches inevitably deprived one of all but the most basic recognition skills. He picked up the cardboard box and asked her how much it was going to cost them. "$7.39." She refused to break their icy gaze. He silently put the box back on the shelf and grabbed the store brand containing only had one strength (which might as well have been labeled "steel wool," since that's what it felt like). "We don't need to be wasting money on frivolities when the generic brand does the job just as well." She paused for a second, noting not-so-insignificantly that this was the closest he had ever come to referencing her period, or indeed any needs she had as a woman.
This revelation hit her. She took the generic brand and put it back on the shelf, echoing the confrontational gesture he had just made. As soon as she had picked up the original package, he ripped it out of her hands; instinctively, she grabbed it back and threw it down the aisle and into the next, where it landed, crumpled, next to the multivitamins. To punctuate this gesture, she shoved the cart, where it hit him square in what she considered to be the fleshy manifestation of all of his narcissistic tendencies.
He was too stunned to move.
She stormed out of the store into the dark embrace of the night.
"That was the instant I knew I had to leave him or else I would die." She took a sip of wine. The TV droned on in the background. "Less than a week later, we appeared in court."
I considered this for a second and turned back to that reality show about the Kardashians. Kim was at it again.
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