letter to no one

Dear Bicycle Seat Thief,

I hope that you feel every inch of your sorry human skin melt excruciatingly away in the flames of hell.

May your days of your sorry excuse for human existence be numbered.

xoxo,
Chloe

of lunch-eaters and table-benches

It was the only park nearby. Well, it wasn't really a park, as it lacked the requisite vegetation, covered as it was in asphalt and brightly colored children's climbing things. It was more like a playground, but at least it had plentiful benches, where Chloe could sit and eat her lunch, solitary among the shrill cries of spoiled 3 year olds, untended by chatting nannies.
On the whole, the playground suited its purpose for Chloe: a place to sit by herself under the sun. Every lunch hour was a new story; upon arrival, Chloe walked farther into the playground until she spied an open bench.
For many months, she coveted the four pairs of benches that faced one of four tables just outside the gates, under some trees. They were always taken, mostly by solitary lunch eaters, as if they felt themselves so lucky when they found their prize that they never left their seats, day after day. And no one would think to try to sit in the empty facing bench, because no one in their right mind would want to sit and eat their lunch facing a complete stranger, in some sort of forced, awkward closeness.
Then, one day, the playground gods shone down upon Chloe. The first pair of table-benches was open. She took a seat, smiling satisfyingly in her mind, spending five whole minutes retrieving the lunch items from her bag and setting it upon the table.
Just as she took her third bite of tuna salad, a 30-something businessman walked up to the facing bench and asked Chloe in the most polite of ways, "if anyone sitting here?"
The politeness only made her rage worse. Surely he was joking? She looked around at the other table-benches, all of which were attended by a solitary person. Why didn't he ask one of them? Why ask in the first place? She never asked anyone before, patiently waiting for her day, this, sunny, special day, when the playground gods would shine down upon her. Surely he thinks it could be at least slightly awkward, him, in his shirt and tie, eating a sub sandwich, facing her, two feet away? She would have to start some sort of labored conversation, the kind that strangers in uncomfortably close situations in places like New York have, consisting of awkward, basic generalizations about the weather and such. What a drag. What a jerk.
"No," said Chloe, as she re-packed her carefully placed lunch items, remnants of those short sweet moments of naivete that were taken from her just as quickly as they appeared, then retreating to a regular, non-table bench.

ring of fire

Chloe didn't know whether to scream and shout, laugh, or cry. Nevertheless, the feelings erupted from her like submarine volcano, the molten lava spewing up from the deepest of recesses, unbeknownst to all but herself, below a cool, calm blue surface. Building quietly upon itself whenever the moment arose, centuries later, she might finally break the surface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_volcano

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_fire

here come the gents

Drew always forgot to bring beer for himself when he came over to her apartment after work. Chloe didn't drink beer, the consequence of her unrelenting thirst for wine. She never had any beer on hand.
So, as usual, he had to go out all over again, and, as usual, in her slippers and robe, she reminded him of the only place nearby that sells beer - the Vietnamese shop on Mott. He could find it in the drink case next to the soybean paste.
When Drew returned, he exclaimed his shock about the "sheer quantity of silk-clad blondes in towering stilettos, led by dudes in finance/banking costume." This confirmed Chloe's worst fears. They had finally broken the Canal street barrier, venturing forth into her once quiet-after-dark neighborhood. What did it all mean?
As she pondered her near future - her rent succumbing to the forces of gentrification, an Irish bar installed next door, tequila howls outside her bedroom window at 4 in the morning - she thought about the repercussions that extended beyond her own interests. Where would this trajectory be in 10 years?
Chloe imagined it coming full circle. All the Upper East Siders will have migrated to the "new cool neighborhoods," Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, deserting their abodes in Midtown and Uptown and leaving all but the old rich in their fanciful townhomes. With skyrocketing vacancies, rents in those neighborhoods go down, thus beginning a mas exodus of artists, designers, musicians, and writers from Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Chinatown, and Lower East Side, all to congregate in the now-affordable Upper East Side. Faux-hip midtown bars give way to dive bars with $1 PBRs, and bands perform where power lunches once ruled, among wood paneling and dusty chandeliers.

reckoner

It wasn't every day, or every month, for that matter, that Chloe found some new music that she liked. And only very rarely did she happen upon a piece that felt transcendental, at which point she would listen to it over and over, eventually beating it till its poor melodious death, only to be resurrected once again upon a chance encounter many months later. Such was the case, once again, with a song she heard by an artist from whom she would not have expected such a reaction.
But this one was more complex, expanding and contracting in deliberate forward movement in melodic waves, like Arvo Part's Frartes. Like all the others before it, she would play it in permanent repeat mode in the darkness of her bedroom, and, flowing in and out of her, the sounds caressed her to sleep. And when she awoke in the morning its echoes would greet her with good morning wishes.
Chloe thought it fitting, then, as she listened to the song in the afternoon, that it reminded her of her favorite film, called Sunrise from 1927. She remembered that right after she saw the film for the first time, in the haze of the emotional catharsis in which she had indulged for the past 95 minutes, she called her best friend Jana to inform her that she wished to show the film at her own funeral, whenever that may be, that she felt so strongly that it was almost an expression of her own self. The film, complex and layered, yet visually beautiful, had affected her like none other, much the same way this new song had. Each work of art was the sonic and visual expression of the same feeling, the same experience.

cycles

Jules: What is it?
Catherine: Sulfuric acid, for the eyes of men who tell lies.

Jules et Jim (1962)


She always fell hard for them. Like a schoolgirl with a crush, she always thought. But then they would always fall harder in return. And, sometimes after weeks, sometimes after years, Chloe would suddenly get rid of whatever unfortunate male specimen happened to be around...so that she could finally spend a Friday night alone in her apartment drinking wine and her weekends riding her bike aimlessly around Brooklyn.
Forever attaching, unattaching, and reattaching herself, she was doomed to a vicious cycle. And Chloe knew that eventually, when the wrinkles appeared and when her hair began decorating itself with bright silver strands, she was further doomed to a life of nine cats and twenty-three houseplants. And these, eventually, she would not be able to get rid of so easily.

separate lives

They met by accident, or rather, by default; as such, they met under circumstances that allowed for the possibility that each had already gone separate ways (which was, in fact, the case). And so, after sunset, these separate lives entered that vague realm of time and space that exists between the relentless consecutive numbered units of human consciousness. There, they met one another, and amid rolling waves of grain stretching before them like an ocean of time, they danced freely together under the white glow of the crescent moon.

[for emily]