Christmas card

Today I received a Christmas card from someone whom I’d like to call my “Christmas friend” from school. Because every year at this time, she would send me, without fail, a Christmas card wishing me a happy Christmas and a good year ahead, and she would also remind me how much she appreciates me as a friend. Indeed. This year, her card was especially exceptional. She wrote the usual and then, to my surprise, added that she really appreciate my friendship and encouragement to her all this time, even though I might not know it. And if I remember correctly, the last time we met or spoke was more than a year ago. Perhaps more, I am not sure; it has been such a long time since I last saw her. So what is she talking about? I feel very puzzled and at the same time slightly amused, and so I have decided to call her my “Christmas friend,” a friend whom I will always hear from during this time of the year, without reciprocating her sentiment, not because I am a heartless cad but really because I have no faith that she would continue to do this the following year. But year by year, she surprised me. So perhaps next year, I should write her a Christmas card as well, perhaps I should remind her how much of a friend she has been to me, all this time, and how much her time and attention given to writing Christmas cards for me has been a great source of comfort and encouragement for me – even though she might not know it. Perhaps next year, I should write her a Christmas card reminding her how long we haven’t actually spoken to each other, and that I have long since given up the notion that she was still a friend to me. Perhaps that would stop her from writing to me ever again.

The man sits down, adjusts his trousers, his shirt collar, brushes back his hair. He unwraps the burger and takes a bite, chewing slowly while bringing the morning paper closer to him, reading the headlines quickly and turning the pages with a quick, jerky motion. Between his reading he sips his coffee and takes a few more bites from his ham-and-cheese burger, his eyes seldom moving away from the page he is reading. Putting down the paper at the sports section, he turns to look at the time, and sees in front of him a young boy of about five years old. The boy looks at him, extends his right hand forward with the palm outstretched, and shows him a one-dollar gold coin. He stares at the boy, then at the coin, then at the boy again. He waits. The boy does not speak, but brings his palm nearer the man's torso. He frowns, then reaches out to take the coin. As his finger touches the boy's palm, the boy withdraws his hand suddenly, laughing loudly as he does so. He makes a face at the man, then runs away. The man laughs and shakes his head in amusement, and picks up his paper.

exercises in paragraphs

I finally finished Rabbit, Run. And because i pitied Mr angstrom (rabbit), Rabbit, Redux is now punishing. But Updike's prose challenges me, tires me. How does he do it? His genius, his depiction so real - so true, exceedingly and overflowing in talent, while meanwhile, I feel as if I am losing the ability to spell and forgetting the meaning of words.. Very old people who can hardly walk, dumb men with loud conservatively wrong or false opinions, a dying aunt, and hunchbacks remind me how we may all end up. So at 12.15 i forced myself to write a couple of paragraph, forgive me if they unfortunately remind you of smut. Updike is not Chicken Soup for the Soul.

_________________________________

Jerry stands back and is amazed to see Grace, who exhales a certain glow in her youthful smile, sigh with an experienced eighty year old thoughtfulness. As if she has vast knowledge to conceal in humility. And now, she walks down the corridor with a conscious amble.

_______________________________

Fantasy is the world. In other life only the lewdest and smuttiest things grasp him that way. His now strange left hand gropes number one then the other putting pressure on the prostate; half-imagining, the video on the computer plays the unrealness that he half-disbelieves; half delusional, which consciousness scrape at him slowly. In his mind he is talking to the women as if they are real. They are all Melissa now complicit in her deception whispering to him her filthiness.

_______________________________

Steven is home when she comes back from exercises with the girls.  The small three room flat has that linger of a hesitant flagrance; it must be Myrtle, her favorite scent; a candle has been lit on the kitchen table and another on the cabinet top where he has been preparing a dish. Janice calls, "Steven!". Though it is a small flat so that his typing away in the night in the kitchen may be heard in their room, Steven does not answer. Astounding how secretive men become when romantic.

_______________________________

It is still too early to meet Jared. He drives up and back through BL road towards BG, towards the ugly temple welcoming all; through the dull morning, of rows of shops selling food, furniture and confectionery, of slow joggers and of young people learning how to drive for the first time; turning left past home through the big roads and reaching the empty expressway; green signboards with white words directing him to the rigid dullness of elsewhere, to J where he did his college, C or BV towards where he did his degree, H and C where his ex-girlfriend stays, or straight ahead to the city where he works. Too much of the same sorts of aspirations; that is our craziness, and it is rotten, this need to achieve according to this dull society, to be like candy canes in a christmas jar.

45 minutes - four paragraphs, at this rate, i am never going to write.