I felt like one of those girls you'd see on the Disney channel, not the young ones with pink ribbons and sparkely camasols, but the older ones that were what the pre-pubescent minds watching it looked up to. I'm sure I didn't look it too much, but I felt so, with my black filp-flops that were flipping and flopping behind me, and my flared out jeans so tight around my thighs that I could barely put one stiff leg in front of the other. It wasn't me anymore. I almost looked forward to the yearly clothes shopping trip my mother will drag me on. Her treat, of course.

I stood there in the new books section, with that slanty stand only one knee slightly bent and the other locked into position. Where did I belong less... Here or the Disney channel? I felt like an idiot. But one thing I knew about myself, if I knew anything, was that I liked to read. I wasn't one who knew all of the new authors and had intellegent discussions with thier peers about the meanings of the books. I poked around at the books I'd never heard of, Apprentice to the Flower Poet by Debera Weinstien, The Bird Artist by Howard Norman, and Eden by Olympia Vernon. Those were the three I had in hand, anyway. Maybe these titles were well known, maybe they weren't, but observing the techniques and and voices of these obscure (to me?) authors somehow appealed to me.

The well air-conditioned building offered some escape, though. Enough time for me to take a breather, to get lost in these worlds that other artists have created, and to run from the world I have created. I sat down in the padded chair at one of the tables, and noticed the other's around me. The ivory white haired woman to my right reminded me of the older lady from Murder She Wrote... What was her name? The first thing I noticed about the younger girl across from me was her shiney black hair pulled back into a ponytail, not the fact that she was asleep atop an enormous stack of notes and research-type books. There were two, even younger, girls looking at the shelf in front of me pulling out every book containing the word "chocolate" that they could find. Smiling at this, I opened to the page before the beginning of the first chapter of Eden;

Do you think you shall enter the garden of
bliss without such trials as those who have
passed before you? -The Koran


I was a few pages into the book when an older man wearing a vibrant, oceany-green polo shirt sat down at my table. His hair was turning gray and very out of place, unorganized. He had good posture though, I noticed, then he caught my eyes at his. He struggled a bit with his cell phone and the outlet set in the middle of the table, while asking me with a strange accent, to watch his phone while he went to a computer. I smiled polietly and agreed to. He seemed overly thankfull. Just before I regained my concentration I eyed the dusky red hardcover that he set down next to his phone. Before I even read the shiney gold letters stamped on it's exterior, I regognized it as an encyclopedia, then read on; Encyclopedia Americana Volume # 11, 2003. I silently toyed with the thought of him being an immagrant preparing for an exam of some sort to gain citizenship. Yes, that's what he was... because that's what I wanted him to be.

About ten pages later I got that feeling you get when you know someone is standing over your shoulder. Mom, She was back from grocery shopping. Here to take me away, since she was my only transportation home. I gathered my things and headed out the automatic sliding doors. The drastic change from the hiked up air-conditioned environment, to the uncomfortable Texas heat seemed to no longer affect me. Too bad it took seven years of living in it.

I still have that feeling like someone's standing behind me. But I look, and no one is there.

Whew...
I love the writing style that you display in this entry. Definitely kept me reading!
» etheracide on 2004-08-01 02:27:13

I second etheracide on the lovely writing style you have was it Angela Landsbury? You should see her when she was young, she was in Gaslight and The Portrait of Dorian Grey. (I highly recommend the first, the second scared me to death!) I know what you mean about reading. I'm not the "intellectual" reader that purposefully reads terrible books so that I can call them "inspired" and prattle on to my intellectual friends about them. I read what I like. It's cool that you do, too.
» Zanzibar on 2004-08-15 02:40:05

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