Fluroescents and Mice

a non-linear perspective on every day life

(I)

The cup of coffee was cooling down slowly as it sat on the desk. The room that surrounded it was quite messy. It had a chaos-tinged personality, with a little bit of a philosopher side to it. The walls freshly painted with white, covering the faded paint that was there before it. A history now lost but perhaps not entirely forgotten. Several posters, essays, and pieces of artwork covered the walls, each with a little something to say. One said, “Oh hey, I’ve done this before!” and others “I wish I had done this” while some just uttered questions like “why”. The essays touched on several different subjects. One was an critical analysis on the Japanese novel Norwegian Wood  titled Nostalgia: A critical analysis of Murakmi’s novel Norwegian Wood. Others were essays on different genres of art and music as well as other topics. There was one on the anatomy of a praying mantis.

                The desk it sat on was just as messy as the room. Mismatched papers cluttered across it. The several rings that decorated its surface indicated the presence of other cups of coffees in its past. Pens and pencil scattered around. If someone were to come across it, one would think that perhaps the owner had ADD or needed a touch up lesson on organization.

                The chair that accompanied the desk was torn, used, and obviously had a good number of years on it. It had felt love. Whoever has had the chance to own it must have had a hard time separating from it. The departure was always the hardest part. However, given a couple days everyone, the chair and its owner, would have moved on and settled. The only other piece of furniture in the room was the futon on the opposite corner, same side, of the desk and the chair. Ragged and stained, this too had felt the years gone by. Perhaps someone has loved it like how someone loved the chair.

                It was not a big room. It was the cheapest in the city. It had but one window that was positioned so it it could flood the room with just enough sunlight. Then at night, the single florescent bulb would be switched on. The light was dull, but it did the job.

                By this point in the time, the coffee was lukewarm. Someone had forgotten it. They had brewed the fresh cup and walked away. It must be lonely to be forgotten. However, who is to say the cup of coffee felt lonely at all. It was just ordinary cup after all. It was used to moments like this. So much so that it must have had felt nothing of the sort. It, like the chair and the futon, had adjusted to its circumstances.

                It started to rain. The room darkened enough to justify switching on the single bulb. The rain started out light but got heavy as time went on. The sound of the rain hitting against the window echoed in the room. The room always felt different at times like this. It felt more serene to be in. Perhaps it was the combination of the rain and the quietness of the room that had this lulling effect. Perhaps it was something else entirely. Nonetheless, the room had felt different at that moment.

                The coffee was cold. A couple of hours has past since it was brewed. No one would want it now. There was no use in trying to reheat it. It wouldn’t taste the same. Thus it would eventually be dumped out. The cup gently washed then put away to sit in the dark in the old wooden cupboard. It would be forgotten once again, but only for a while. The cycle would eventually repeat itself. It would be taken out. The pot would be heated. The coffee grounded. Then it will once again have its inside filled with the hot bitter black liquid. Only to be left on the desk to wait until someone, anyone, finally takes the first sip. Perhaps someone would find the taste pleasing. Maybe they would find it to be too hot or too bitter for their taste. Perhaps they will find the smell to be pungent. Maybe someone will be overcome with joy and quickly down the bitter substance. Either way, the loneliness would subside at that point.

                It was still raining outside. The wind started to pick up. The coffee was still on the desk, the chair still empty, and the futon still unused. The room was empty. What had happened? Where was the owner? These questions haunted the room and the objects that sat waiting inside it. Someone must have lived here at some point. Yet, it was empty. It has been empty, for some time. For perhaps much longer than one would consider to be normal, whatever normal happens to be. The room wasn’t in a shabby area of the city. It was the quieter part. It didn’t share the same liveliness of the other parts, but that just gave it the charm it had. The room was inside an apartment. Like the room, the apartment was empty. The apartment was inside a complex just a couple stories up. It was smaller than the rest. The façade had a similar aged look as the interior. The block the apartment complex was on was deserted. There was a small park nearby, just at the corner end of the street, which hardly anyone ever visited. The sidewalk had cracks, and the roots of the trees had already broken the surface. Leaves were scattered along the street, piling up in some places. The rain caused some puddles that blanketed some portions of the street. The trees were drinking up happily.

                The wind was dying down, but it was still strong enough to push the swings in the park. They swung silently, giving the park a ghostly appearance.

(II)

                The owner of the room is a writer, a lover of novels. He is scientist, a mathematician, and a philosopher. He is artist of sorts and a musician. He is assertive but patient. Quiet but outgoing at times. He usually hardly leaves the room. He busies himself typing away on his vintage typewriter, with his Bob Dylan vinyl playing in the background. His thoughts usually become muddled when he writes. Several thoughts would flood his head. Each thought unrelated and often random.

His fingers were nimble like a pianist. His speech as eloquent as a poet. People found him to be calming. They liked him, he didn’t understand why. He saw nothing special in himself. He was just another person he would think. Just another person lost in the sea that lies before everyone. The ocean that is life. Chaotic and shapeless. People often seek meaning as a means of anchoring themselves. He found this to be funny. Why waste time trying to find something that doesn’t exist? Create he would say. Create that in which you wish to have. Yet, he couldn’t blame them. He understood the fear. He was scared, just like them. He couldn’t blame them. He understands why they would fear something as consequential as taking action.

There were times where he hated himself. Where he wished he had made that other choice. Where he wished he could take what he said back and have said something else. At times like this he would become distant. He would disappear within himself. Sink back down into the ocean. Then, he would put on that Bob Dylan record. Sit down in the torn used chair. Pull out his typewriter. Then lose himself in his words. Words would leak out of him like blood leaks out of a cut. His thoughts took the shape of ink in his veins and they would stain whatever paper he would touch.

Opposite to his apartment was the barista from the café on the opposite street. Often she would come by and pick up his latest piece. She loved his writing. He never knew why. He was by no means a terrible writer, but he wasn’t good either. She said he was being too harsh on himself. He felt that he wasn’t being harsh enough.

The girl from the café had a cat. It was rather small for its age. It had soft gray fur. Its eyes brightly lit and its purrs soft and welcoming. Whenever she would leave her door open just a crack the cat would slide on through and greet him every time he entered his apartment. It would come by purring and rub against his leg.

The coffee in the cup came from the café she worked at. He liked the coffee they brewed there but they didn’t sell the beans they used. So she would sometimes come by and drop off a small batch of that day’s brew. He was always eager on days like this. He would snatch the bag and smell the aroma. From the moment he got the beans he immediately would grind them, heat the pot, and pull out his chemex. The most recent batch was softer than usual. It lacked the bitter bite that their coffees usually had. He still liked it and as usual when she gave him the blend he would take it graciously.

The cup was brewed that morning. But for a reason only known to him he left it there untouched.

He went out that morning. After brewing the cup he sat at his desk, pen to hand, the paper he laid out in from of him. Then his phone rang,

“Hello?”

“Are you busy?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“Can you come out?”

He said he could and he did. He quickly got up, grabbed his coat, and headed on out. Leaving the freshly brewed cup there.

 Later that night he came back. Dropped his bag on the floor. Went into the room and saw the cup. He gave it a quick whiff and stood there for a moment in thought. He then proceeded to empty the contents out in the sink, gave it a quick wash, and placed it inside the cupboard.

He sat back down in the chair and pulled out the typewriter. Gave himself a few seconds to organize his thoughts then proceeded to type. He titled this paper The Coffee Shop Chronicles. It was a short piece, about ten-thousand words, taking him a couple of hours only. When he finished he gave out the usual sigh of satisfaction. He never read his pieces upon finishing them. He would just tack the finished piece on one of the walls and leave it there, as if he was expecting it to ferment into perfection.

(III)

The clock read 2 AM. The girl from the café was still awake. She sat crossed legged on her bed. Her laptop open in front of her. She had Bach playing on her iPod. She had an article on Descartes Meditations open. She was a philosophy major at the local liberal arts university. It isn’t a big university, student body is around fifteen-thousand. She worked at the café full-time in order to help pay off her tuition. She also had some loans and grants she got after graduation high school. Still, it wasn’t enough to pay off the tuition completely. Her parents couldn’t afford it. Her father was laid off two years and her mother is only working part time at the hospital.

She didn’t mind working at the café. She loved the smell of freshly roasted coffee in the morning and she loved the people she gets to meet on a daily basis. Her shift is from six in morning to six in the afternoon. Her friends often question her working twelve-hour shift, “How do you have any energy left for school” they would ask. She just shrugs her shoulders, “It’s not like I have any other choice”.

 When the clock read 3, she rubbed her tired eyes and fell onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling. She had her 6 AM shift soon. She weighed between staying up or getting some rest. Both had their pros and cons. But she didn’t want to risk being late, she has already done too many times. Then she thought about the boy across the hall. About the last piece he wrote and gave her for her amusement. She really did love his writing, but for some reason she had the impression he didn’t believe her.

She sat back up, closed her laptop, and placed it aside on ground. She made her way to the kitchen and heated a kettle to make herself a cup of coffee. Once it was done, she took her usual placed on the old chipped wooden chair at the small redwood table. She found both at a garage sale a couple months before she moved into the city. Coming from a small suburban town, she was excited to move out. However, she failed to take into consideration that she could hardly afford an unfurnished apartment as it was. So she had to settle for the two piece from the garage sale. It was decent. Nothing fancy, just a table and a chair. Somewhere on the surface a couple of doodles were carved into the wood. Looked a little like the work of a young child who got his hand on knife without his parents noticing. She found it amusing to look at from time to time. In fact, she kind of took comfort from it. It gave the table an element of innocence. Carved into the wood like how innocence is carved into a person’s soul, only be forgotten if you don’t take a look at it every so often.

(IV)

He never understood the point of college. They tell you it is good for you. They tell you you’ll never amount to anything if you don’t. Not going is an effective way of ensuring you’ll end up either unemployed or with a dead end remedial job. But most people seem to end up in those places either way. Bachelors, Masters, and PhDs, everyone lands back in the very dumps they tried to avoid in the first place.

People seemed to fail to notice that there was more to living in than just landing a job. There was more than just surviving. They burden you with these pressures to live up the low expectations they have built of you. They only think you are capable of landing just some job. People seem to have forgotten that education had other purposes.

Perhaps this is why he felt so wrong being at a college. He remembers his first two years at the local liberal arts school. The people he met. The people he fell for. It all seems distanced now. All the memories, pushed against the deepest darkest corners of his conscious mind. He didn’t hate going to college. He actually found himself enjoying it at times. But it never made him happy. In high school, he dreamt of all things he would accomplish because of going to college. However, reality set it and he realized that there was more to accomplishing what you want then just going to college. If you wanted to do something, he convinced himself, you had to go for it with your bare hands. College is the gloves in which people wear before grabbing what they want. It is the condom in which people use while f*****g so that they don’t find themselves tied to a cradle and ring. What were people so scared of?

(V)

It was mid-autumn. Winter was around the corner and the early winter breeze started coming. He always particularly liked this time of the season. It would rain quite often. Serving as a good excuse to lock himself in to revel in his thoughts and to print them on paper. He had a vinyl he found a couple days back from the old pawn shop a couple of blocks up playing. It was an old local band from the early 90s. They didn’t last long apparently.

                He had the kettle going. The girl from across brought him another batch of beans. An Ethiopian blend he never heard of. She said the owner liked to mix up his own concoctions every so often. Usually they never turn out so well, but this one was surprisingly good. So she promised. The beans gave off a woody aroma. The color was a shade lighter than Italian. When he brewed the cup the color of liquid was quite dark and gave off a strong aroma of sorts. It was quite earthy, with a light metallic taste to it.

                He sat back, cup in hand, and typewriter in front. The window was open just a crack, enough to let in the breeze. The sky the gun steel gray. The air smelled like it does when there is new storm coming in. The aroma of the coffee reminded him of the girl across. Every time he came across her the smells of being in a café for a long period of time permeated quite strongly. It hanged in the hair like a strong perfume she doused herself in. Her eyes were coffee colored, her skin was light mocha, and her hair was black. She had an Asian complexion, but with a hint of something else. It always bothered him, but he never brought himself to actually ask her. Perhaps the answer is obvious enough and that he just fails to notice.

                He thought about her for a while.

(VI)

                She boarded onto the train heading away from the city center. The cityscape was quickly overtaken by the rolling green hills dressed in the fallen leaves of the sparsely laid out trees. A light breeze from one of the open windows gave a hint of an early winter. She rested her head against the window, gazing outward towards the running landscapes. It has been a while since she last left the city. Chills began to rundown her spine as she came to realize that she had left behind what she knew so intimately. The city had become her home. She began to felt like an estranged child abandoned by her family. No, the city was the estranged one. It was her family and it was she who was abandoning it. Regret began to settle in.

                She was off to a place she was once knew. A place she once called home but had left since. It was much quieter than the city. Her memories of home were vague. Loosely scattered images filled her head, forming a somewhat coherent and linear storyline. She was born into a family of five, making her the sixth member and third child. Her mother was stay-at-home-mom for most her childhood memories. Her father worked a small business firm. He served most as liaison office, communicating between the firm and the big head company in the city. Then there was the eldest child, her big sis. She left home when she rather young so she has a rather small amount of memories of her. What she does remember she was quite lovely in nature. Kind, soft-hearted, and patient. Never failing to act when action needed to be taken. She remembers once when she was in elementary school. The older kids use to tease her. For the life of her she never knew why, for all she knew she was just a random bystander chosen as a target. They are the reason why she hated everyone minute of time she spent at that school. But one day she came home crying. Their treatment of her was particularly bad that day. Bad enough she can hardly recall what happened. Big sis came to her asking her what is wrong. She didn’t say anything, but she knew she must have had figured it out because the next day the older kids ignored her. They stood in the corner, eyeing her with contempt, but nothing more.

                The thought of her older sister brought a bit comfort to her, but that quickly faded. At nineteen her big sis packed up and just left without saying anything. Nothing was ever said about why she left. No one really seemed to care. The day after she left, the usual treatment continued. 

Author's Note

I originally wrote this for National Novel Writing Month but never found the time to actually reach the 50k word mark. So this is what I managed to write up. I tried to clean it up a bit (i.e. grammar, etc) but there may be a few slip ups every here and there. It is not a complete piece, however I never really intended to have a set ending. I've thought of just ending it the way I ended it. However, I am considering actually working on it further. For now, I no real direction for this piece and will most likely add on whenever I feel like it. But for now I just wanted to post this to see how people like it.

Thanks!