Kafkaesque story

[This is the very first copy of a thing for class. It needs work...]

It’s a beautiful morning, late April, finally getting warm. I left my window open last night, and when I woke up warm air was drifting in, and I could smell tree blossoms. The sky is pale blue, and clear. A few stories below on the sidewalk, a middle-aged man in shorts is walking a black dog. It’s still very early.

When I leave my room today, I could stop at the coffee shop down the street. It’s not too warm out yet for coffee, and I just got my paycheck, I can afford a nice breakfast. When I get to work, I could smile at my colleagues, say Hey, how was your weekend! and listen to Sarah talk about the party she had for her boyfriend’s birthday, and tell her Sounds like you had fun! and I’m glad it worked out! I’m wide awake today; when the customers start lining up I should be able to help them without getting confused, it’s easy, just one step at a time. When CJ comes in at 2:00 I could ask how his weekend was, and he might tell me about it, and he might ask me to have dinner with him later. When I get home I could do all of that laundry that’s sitting around, and then go to bed early, to be ready for tomorrow.

When I leave my room today, I’ll walk past the coffee shop because, no matter how loud I force myself to talk, the cashier won’t understand what I’m saying. When I get to work and say “hi” to everyone, they‘ll stare at me, and I’ll stand apart from them as Sarah tells stories about her weekend, about how drunk she got. The customers will come in, and I‘ll get overwhelmed and have to make them wait while I untangle my thoughts. When CJ gets there at 2:00 he’ll greet me politely, after a glance at my nametag, and then ask where Sarah is. When I get home I’ll eat whatever’s left in the refrigerator, if there’s anything left. No one will call me. I’ll stay up late doing nothing.

It’s a beautiful morning, and I’m not leaving my room.

Fallen

[I'm working on a retelling of Thomas Mann's "Fallen". This is the (very rough) first paragraph.]

The four of us are together again. This Friday we’re at one of those fake Mexican chain restaurants out in the suburbs; none of us got paid today so we had to go somewhere cheap. We stand out here a little, I think, us among the overweight dyed-blond women, the men in polo shirts, the loud, itchy little kids. Especially Anna. She's had our waiter's attention all evening, his attention on her low-cut shirt, her flat-ironed hair, her teasing glances. I know she doesn’t really mean any of it. She’s a writer, and she “chooses her costumes carefully,” as she told me once. For “research.”

from an unsent letter to an online acquaintance

Internet. No human contact. I know you; I don't. I go back and forth. It's an unsolved problem maybe, something new in the digital age. Do I still have my old belief that we are all just souls clothed in flesh? I don't know. I have no beliefs. I believe in science and run from it; I believe in art and run towards it. Those are my beliefs.

Scene

At the library I sat down next to a man, took out my laptop charger and started to untangle it. Noting his furtive glance at me, I moved my hands more gently, drawing the plug slowly through loop after loop, wondering absently if I was torturing him. I thought of old paintings of women sewing, their focused hands gracefully pulling upwards, downwards. Does it really matter whether the thread between a woman's fingers is delicate fiber or a computer cord? The implications are always the same.

The progression of a description-- part 1

My first three attempts to "work out" a "pointed little effect" regarding something that's been floating around in my mind for the last few months. (This will suck. Brace yourself.)

...blond, wool-coated men that haunt the halls of academia...

...weak-looking, blond, wool-coated young men gliding through the halls of academia...

...blond, weak-looking young men, with their glasses and wool coats, striding soundlessly through the halls of academia...

I'm so Kafka, writing out my attempts. And I'm so fucking profound. Haha. I'm trying to be Mann, aka something I'm not. I need to give my pompous 19th-century tone a swift kick to the huevos. Looking back at my early attempts at fiction (ie. last June, ie. not even a year ago, DAMN IT!), I'm so ashamed at how fucking pretentious I was; I was trying to write like Mann/ a dead 1800's Euro white guy. A bad idea. But everyone goes through their shitty stage. Pretty sure I'm still in mine. But at least I'm progressing!

Which sounds less pretentious: "academia" or "the academy"? Or do they both suck? Meh. Fin.