Chapter Text
09 September ‘32
I am writing without a face. Or so I wish.
So much for a first sentence in my first journal entry. After all, it’s the first day of the schoolyear, the first few days of autumn and September. It is an overture of leaves and hoarfrost. The layers of coats are doubled. The breeze is so much heavier, oppressive, and unmerciful to the plastic bags and aluminum containers loitering in the streets. I’ve seen so many of them flying like makeshift birds the past twenty minutes. Out of all passengers and pedestrians, I’m the only one tilting her head back to see how the wind would send the trash waltzing from the pavement up to the antennas of buildings.
That’s alright. Nobody knows me, anyway.
I’m writing this journal entry on the light rail to Couron because I was lucky enough to find a comfortable seat this morning and it is a 25-minute ride. Maybe I’ll integrate this as a morning routine – a writing exercise of some sort – before I go to school. Gets my neurons and motorics working, I suppose. A good time spent with myself and my anonymity. Also, there’s really nothing much for me to do here. I think I’ll write before I get lightheaded.
There is an old lady with a yellow headscarf sitting next to me. Two students just boarded on the fifth stop. The rail drives on before they could settle down. They stumbled a bit.
The chair in front of me is vandalized with a heart pierced by an arrow, along with other scribbles in varying penmanship.
These include the following words
- PISSFAG
- Mara be mine
- The river dreams of ash
- End the war in Co Hoi
- need nose candy? call 696969420
- fuck the police
- jean was here
Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m nearing my stop.
10 September ’32
Never mind, actually. Writing on the rail yesterday gave me a bit of a motion sickness. I felt lightheaded when I went to school, and I even had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom during a lecture about Suzerainian art. I don’t think I’ll write long entries in moving vehicles anytime soon. Not to mention, I’ve only just realized how shitty my handwriting was on the first journal entry.
I actually bought this journal the other day because I stopped by a secondhand bookstore. I was the only customer and the shop owner was an old man. He was having a warm bowl of onion soup for breakfast. I don’t know why, but things like that stir an old, wooden sadness in me. It’s the flavor of sadness you would see in drawers you have to tug on twice just to get them opened, only to have them plug the room with the aroma of dust and empty cocoons.
I noticed that this journal seemed old with yellow pages, but it had no entry. I bought this instead. I wonder why the previous owner didn’t write here.
None of the books interested me, anyway, and I was too busy minding the old man.
I don’t know why I’m like this. I feel like I carry the weight of the world with me sometimes. I feel sad for stores on the risk of shutting down. I feel for the tin cans of homeless men ringing with the measly weight of two coins. I feel sorry for the cat taking shelter from the rain under overweight waste containers. I feel the responsibility to render the world easier for everybody around me – to be the first morning customer buying in stores at risk of shutting down. I don’t mind giving my seat to somebody who looks exhausted or giving somebody else on the sidewalk some spare change. My parents say it’s a weakness of mine, my kind heart and innate inclination to be a martyr. It fucks me up to hear them say that. I take pride in this ability to shoulder everything, to feel everything, all the ambiguous greys, piss-coat oranges, and yolky suns of the world. I’ll take them as they are.
Whatever the case, I hope I won’t regret my choice. For now, I’ll keep choosing my own morals. May I remain kind. May nobody choose to take advantage of me. I’m not sure I would be able to take it if someone does.
11 September ’32
I saw someone at the stop earlier.
Normally, I don’t really register the faces of people into memory because I’ve ascribed a ritual to my morning commutes to college, my personal homage to the sea of faces and spoilage of belongings wafting about the rugged streets of Jamrock. Not to sound like a flaneur but that, for me, is one of the most beautiful things about the city – anonymity, faceless, a keyhole glimpse to each other’s lives. And then amnesia.
I don’t mind forgetting and I don’t mind being forgotten.
Anyway, somebody caught my eye earlier. Voyager Road, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t think I’ll be forgetting him anytime soon. There was a man in his 20s there, smoking a cigarette. He looked really cool – the coolest, with his leather jacket and boot-cut pants. I’ve seen all sorts of people, from juvenile delinquents, punks, and art majors, rocking the same requisite of clothes, but he stood out to me in particular. He had slicked back hair and broad shoulders. Captivating muscularity his jacket failed to conceal. The man also bore a pair of soulful eyes that seemed to smile or laugh at anything. There was so much life in his expression. Maybe that’s what drew me towards him.
He’s like the kind of person who knows his place in the world and, if things didn’t go the way he wanted them to, he’d just shrug it off, raise a finger to the pale, and then he would prevail in his own door-gunning, boot-grazing-linoleum-tiles manner. I bet he’s the kind of person people want as their best friend, son, partner, or lover. Maybe he walks into a room and knows the colors outlining the figures of people.
I’m thinking about him too much. I daydream too much, it seems.
I’m a bit embarrassed. He saw me looking at him, and he smiled back and did a two-finger salute wave. I could only do so much as to simply smile. I get embarrassed, thinking about it now, considering how easily I blush.
Sadly though, we didn’t say anything to each other. I boarded the line and I was waiting, praying even, for him to enter, but he didn’t. I watched him from the window, remembering the stop where I first laid eyes on him. Voyager Road. He maintained his eye contact, smiling at me as if we’ve known each other in a metaphysical sense, whether that meant our fingers intertwined in our multiple past lives or if our fossils merged together during the topographical drifts of one eon to the next. Whatever. I hate reading too much into this.
The vehicle took off shortly afterwards. I don’t even know his name. Maybe if he really liked me, he would have followed me as I boarded.
I’m going to bed now. I hope I don’t actually dream about him. Otherwise, it’s going to give me hope. I refuse to let a stranger dictate the trajectory of my life.
12 September ’32
I wish I was joking when I write that he actually boarded this time around. I found it perplexing that he didn’t even take the empty seat next to me. I was a bit confused. Maybe it’s part of his little game. Does he enjoy it – how we’ve spent the entire time sneaking glances to each other’s direction and withdrawing our eyes the moment we catch the other staring?
It’s not like I’m the kind of person to make the first move. I’ve never done this before. Romance is beyond the horizon of light, a blind spot I never dared wander into.
I can’t deny, however, the buoyancy I felt when the doors opened and more people crowded in, blocking my view from him (he prefers to stand next to the doors, never holding onto the handles – not once. What a complete show-off!). I can’t turn away from this — how I felt myself shiver whenever I caught his head emerging from the sea of passengers, eyes scavenging for me. He’s carrying a large bag, wearing track pants and a windbreaker. A bit different from his outfit yesterday. At least, it’s clear he stays in shape. Maybe he’s headed somewhere he can run?
When it was my stop, I headed out. He moved to make way for me. I felt my skin brush against his jacket. We were so close. His heartbeat felt closer to me than my own lungs. He didn’t follow me out. Where is it that he’s going? Why doesn’t he sit next to me? Why doesn’t he speak to me? Does he enjoy making fun of me? This is all so confusing. I need to sleep this off.
13 September ‘32
He boarded the light rail again. I sat on my usual seat and he didn’t take the one next to mine. It’s alright. I made sure he was looking when I took the marker out from my bag. On the seat in front of me, the vandalized one, new words made an addition to the ones I listed a few days ago. I didn’t read them all. I was too busy looking at him and getting my message across.
I wrote on the most available spot. Near a doodle of a penis, a cat, and the words mutiny with the angels, I wrote my own name with a blue marker.
14 September ‘32
Weekend today. Woke up later than the usual. I didn’t board streetcar no. 42.
I’m starting to regret writing my name on the vandalized seat. I could barely sleep thinking about it last night. Such are the perils of neuroticism. I don’t even know him to begin with.
What if he’s a creep? What if he’s a cheater on the verge of turning me into a homewrecker? What if he’s a wifebeater, rapist, serial killer? What if he’s a perverted fuck who’ll kiss me for a night, sneak a camera between my thighs, and then demolish my own reputation by spreading rumors and images of me? I can’t trust anybody these days.
Am I handing him an invitation to my ruin?
I have so much work to do. I need to stop thinking about him. That pissfuck.
Onion soup ingredients
- 2 cups broth
- 1 medium sized onion
- 3 tbs butter
- ½ cup of mozzarella cheese
- 1 ½ vinegar
- salt
- pepper
16 September ’32
He arrived earlier, took my seat this morning, and wrote something on the spot where I wrote last week. He used a red marker that’s nearly out of ink.
He got off before my stop. Again, he didn’t say a word. He just shrugged and grinned at me sheepishly. I watched him jog lightly to wherever it was he needed to be. He didn’t look back. Not once.
Another passenger sat on my usual seat. I didn’t mind though. I just looked at the new graffitied words.
Next to my name, he drew a large heart and a single word: Harry.
Dora ♡ HARRY
I couldn’t stop laughing. I had to cover my mouth through the rest of the ride. What was he thinking? He’s pathetic and cheesy and outdated. A sore loser, kitsch, slobbering landscape of shlock, post-romance neurosis, detritus of fuckery, colossal dilation of the cultural sphere, void of syntagmatic relations. Should be put on trial for the love tactics of a kindergartner.
A heart? For fuck’s sake. That's it.
I think I want Harry to be the rest of my life.