Inside "Inside Llewyn Davis"

I watched "Inside Llewyn Davis" on Sunday. I just had to write something about it. I went in expecting a funny, quirky movie, which it is mostly. But I came out of it feeling quite depressed. Don't get me wrong; I absolutely loved the movie. It moved me, to put it in mediocre words. It moved me enough to make me want to write about it, in a terribly unsatisfactory way. I don't want to get into the plot details because frankly, there isn't enough plot. It's a week in the life of a man who is good but not just good enough. I don't know if I am being narcissistic when I say I could empathize with Llewyn Davis' character. I think anyone who thinks of himself/herself as an artist can empathize with him. You can empathize with his arrogance when he sees his contemporaries' work. You can empathize with him being a jerk to people who try to be nice to him, but in fact, kind of pity him. I don't know why everyone (including me) thinks that they have to be tortured or angry or experience some sort of negative emotion to be thought of as a true artist. With Llewyn, it's not so much the negative emotions. Half the time, he seems numb. His reactions to his friend's death, the fact that he may have a child living somewhere, his father's condition, seem so tame. Or rather, he hardly reacts to any of this. But when he sings, his voice seems to carry the weight of all that he is going through. It almost seems like he is saving up reacting to all these things that life is throwing at him just so that he can sound all raspy and sad when he sings.

The one thing that I loved about this movie, more than anything, is the cat, Ulysses. Also the female cat which is mistakenly believed to be Ulysses. This cat is one thing that makes you want to like Llewyn. He may be an ass to most people  around him and be oblivious of their expectations from him but he is a nice enough person to carry the cat around instead of letting it go (which would have been the practical thing to do). Granted that he abandons the female cat and a physically challenged man in the middle of nowhere in the bitter cold, but hey, we can't please everyone all the time!

The songs are brilliant. The "Please Mr. Kennedy" song is the only cheerful thing in the movie. Oscar Isaac has done a wonderful job. I have not watched any of his other movies but I really hope that he considers this shaggy hair, unshaven, haven't-had-a-bath-in-forever look because it works so well for him. Carey Mulligan looks like a ghost in a Japanese movie but most scenes she is in are really funny. Justin Timberlake hardly has any screen time. The cat still remains the best character in the movie. Especially in that one scene where it is looking out of the subway train at all these sign boards. Believe me, that is Oscar-worthy acting when compared to K-Stew.

If I may self indulge a bit, I could see how my life would end up being if I decided to give writing a shot and get rid of my comfortable lifestyle and struggle to live (and not exist, as Llewyn would say). Only difference is that I wouldn't have any kind friends who'd let me sleep on their couch...

Small Talk

I wrote this one a long time ago. I'd forgotten all about it. This was rejected by an online magazine, which you should read sometime. It's delightful.

Needy, greedy and extremely selfish…

The words ring like an alarm

That refuses to snooze.

How easy  it was to say

“I don’t care!”

You tell me about relative advantages and disadvantages

Of things like cell phones, laptops and tablets.

You tell me the detailed algorithms

Of searching for something

And sorting out among other things.

All I do,

Is watch your black, beetle eyes,

Searching for indices and pointers,

Backtracking to see what I missed.

I sort the things you tell me

Into neat stacks of truth and lies,

Pop things during fights

And push some more elements when we make up.

I touch the back of your hand,

You smile at me and ask me what I’m thinking about.

I begin to tell you how my cat went missing.

Say Cheese

She wakes up every day looking at the stream of sunlight, obscured by the wildly fluttering curtains because they never close the window. She mixes in drinking chocolate in his milk, four spoons, because he loves it sweet and chocolaty. If she questions how he could ever possibly like something that sweet, he smiles at her and says, "Well, I like you, don't I?"

Every day, she steps out of the shower to see a heart drawn on the steamed up mirror. A perfect, symmetric heart. She checks her phone and sees a "Good Morning :)" message from him. She kisses him goodbye and goes to work, all the while thinking of a way to get him to clean the table after dinner that night.

At work, she hears about how her co-worker's husband surprised her with a vacation. She hears about how wonderfully spontaneous he is. She laughs to herself a little about the silliness of it.

She comes back, late in the evening, finds him waiting. She can sense that he is a little angry; he expects her to be home before him. She apologizes, making an overly cute face till he smiles and gives her a hug. He says he missed her, like the deserts miss the rain. She makes his favorite dish with lots of cheese and watches him eat his plate clean. She smiles at seeing him grin, with crumbs in his beard and his impish smile. She sees him watch the news, as she wipes the table and cleans the dishes.

As she goes to bed, he turns to her and tells her that he wants her to come home early every day. She nods, yes, of course she understands. She assures him that she will come early starting tomorrow. He kisses her good night, hugs her tight and falls asleep.She looks at him for a while, sleeping peacefully, not a care in the world, or at least pretending to not have a care in the world. She gently frees herself from his grip and turns towards the window, away from him. She looks at the moonlight with a sigh and waits for the suffocation to set in...

Soporific journeys

The first time he noticed her was when he passed on the log book and no one received it. He looked across the seat to see what was taking the other person so long to take the log book from him. And then he saw her. Her face was slightly inclined towards the left, like she was looking at something really cute and she was reacting to it with an exaggerated curiosity. Her head drooped forward regularly keeping rhythm with the jerks of the bus. Her mouth was slightly open. It took him some time to realize that people were looking at him because he was frozen mid air, in a weird half standing, half sitting posture, the log book in his hand, staring at the sleeping girl. He stretched his hand and passed the book to the guy sitting in the seat before hers.

He saw her again after a week. This time the window beside her was open. The light outside fell across her face every chance that it had. He wanted to see if she was awake today. So he pretended that he'd dropped his keys next to her seat and went close to where she was sitting. He looked closer at her and realized that she was asleep, again. She was still asleep when he got out of the bus.

The next day, he decided he'd go early and try to look at her when she was awake. He dint know why he had to do that. She wasn't even all that pretty. Plus, he'd never spoken to her. She might be a Twilight fan (oh, the horror!) Or worse, she might be a non vegetarian. He laughed to himself as he realized how much he was thinking about the girl he'd seen asleep, twice (he wanted to refer to her as the 'sleeping beauty' but it sounded quite cheesy). He waited with anticipation. For some reason, he remembered his first date when he had shared a Pepsi with his girlfriend.  (They were together for less than two weeks; he'd broken up with her when he found out that she hated the Harry Potter series without ever reading it). He was so lost in his nostalgia that he dint realize that the bus had started and that girl was nowhere to be found. It was disappointing. He'd even taken time to comb his hair properly.

He dint see her again for a few nights. As he walked towards the bus bay, he wondered if she was out on a vacation. Maybe she'd quit. Maybe something bad had happened to her. The thought filled him with some sort of panic. It was foolish to worry about someone he dint know. He went to his bus, Route 47, and got in just as the driver started the bus. And there she was, in the second seat, sleeping again.

He sat next to her. His heart was pounding and his lips felt dry. He sat very carefully so that she wouldn't be disturbed. The bus was an old one and creaked every now and then. But she dint stir. She breathed evenly, a few loose strands of her hair that carelessly fell on her face, bouncing ever so slightly as the great, old bus made its way through the night. He could smell her perfume, something lemony, citrus-y. She had a black backpack that she was hugging to her chest like a pillow. Now that he looked at her, she was very plain looking. He'd probably seen her a hundred times but never registered her face in his memory. She had no make up on, she dint seem too bothered about her appearance. She just looked... peaceful. All he could think of was waking her up and asking her what she dreamed about, asking her what kept her awake at nights. He wanted to hear her laugh. He wanted to hear her sing. It was weird... he wasn't really a romantic. He watched her sleep till the bus stopped and he had to get off the bus. He had an impulsive thought of staying on in the bus till she woke up and finding his way back home later. Then he realized how crazy it seemed, smiled to himself and got off the bus.

The next time he was on the bus, he was so busy reading Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood' that he dint realize who sat next to him. He couldn't recognize her awake. But it was her. She smiled at him as she kept her backpack between them. She glanced at the cover of the book and did not seem to recognize the author or the book. As the bus started, she started talking on her phone. He heard her voice, something he'd been waiting for. He heard about how scared she was living in her apartment all alone, how much she missed her mother. He heard her making plans to catch a movie on the weekend. He heard her make baby voices as she spoke to her pet dog. She paused abruptly and he had to stop himself from pretending to read. He casually glanced away from his book and found her looking right at him. She was holding her palm on her phone and asking him for his name. "Your name?" she said. He was momentarily taken aback. He just stared back at her like an idiot, not knowing how to react. Then she pointed at the log book on her lap. "I thought you shouldn't be disturbed while reading. I could fill in your entry too. So what's your name?" she asked. He mumbled his name and got back to his book. That was the last time he thought of her or spoke to her. He wasn't really the talkative kind...

P.S - I know it is too long but I'm hoping I built up the anticipation enough to justify the anti climax.
P.P.S - When I started out the story, a year ago almost, it was supposed to end on a romantic note. I guess I have changed quite a bit.

I know. It has been a long time. I dint even know Blogger had changed so much. I want to make excuses; that I don't have a laptop to write out new posts, that it is difficult to type on my touch screen phone, that I don't find the time, that the horrible city that I have to work in has left me drained and uninspired but sooner or later, I face the facts. I cannot write anymore. I cannot think about what I would want to write. I cannot think beyond the lame, limited walls of my claustrophobic life to write about anything that might connect with someone other than me. I am not sure when this happened. It is scarily close to the time I started working. But I wouldn't want to blame that. Because no matter how much I try to deny the fact, I am happy with my job right now.

It is quite a shocker to me that I have reached a point where nothing motivates me to write. Is it because I see the same people everyday and face the same situations? Is it because I am too busy reading my Twitter feed to observe something outside the window of the bus and imagine a flashback to a moment that catches my attention? Is my job responsible for rhetoric and sentences starting with conjunctions? I don't know. Other than the enviable achievement of learning what the 'Home' button is for and what miracles it can perform whilst coupled with the 'Shift' button, the last few months have been terrifyingly devoid of meaning. It makes me think that happiness/complacency has very little to do with, can I sound corny, satisfaction in the philosophical, rational sense. I started out writing this post to highlight the good things that have happened to me in the past few months and ended up writing another depressing piece of mediocrity. So yes, not a lot has changed :)

To wrap up things, I want to write. That is probably the only thing I want to look forward to. Going through some of my more recent drafts, I have a feeling there is a chance of me being decently readable. Sometimes I think that writing may be a bit of fashion photography. You write so many things that something will stand out and be good enough.

P.S - I will try to complete some of my drafts. Quite excited :)
P.P.S - Activity engaging is a nice phrase. Almost as nice as the word 'proactive'

Pry-vacy

I think the first door latch was invented to keep away prying eyes during a private moment of sadness.

Papyrus

I feel empty inside. Maybe it's because I watched 'Dexter' too much. Maybe it's because I've always been like that. Lately, I struggle to let my mind land on a memory. Not because I have early signs of dementia or something. I can remember certain things to the point of what clothes others around me were wearing. And when I say others, I don't mean the people close to me. I can probably remember what my friend's friend was wearing some day. I can remember details of several memories. But it's hard to remember what I felt like when that happened to me. I can't remember if I felt sad or happy or angry or excited. I feel blank, like a page that had writing on it but the writing has been erased and all that is left behind is this crumple that looks empty but doesn't feel that way, a page with the impressions left behind by the pressure the writer applied on his/her pen/pencil and forever tarnished it. You erase the ink, the fading graphite but you know that it will never be new again. Just an ugly looking page, a wannabe page hoping it'd be someone's second choice for a scribbled phone number or a grocery list. They will try to smoothen it out, lovingly spread it on the table and run their palms over it to coax it to un-wrinkle itself. When they discover that it won't work, they roll it up, pull at the edges and hope to find it in better looking shape. And finally, when all else fails, they settle for the slightly crumpled piece of processed bamboo and pour their heart out on it.

P.S - I want me to be less lame.

Of half sentences and other...

Sometimes I am obvious to the point of being painful. And sometimes I can use all the words I know and yet fall short of expressing something I feel. Sometimes I feel like I'm too lazy to feel certain emotions and I'd rather circumvent them than actually live with/through them. Sometimes, I blurt out unnecessary things. Sometimes I hide necessary things. Sometimes I'm convinced that some of my dreams were childhood memories. Sometimes I cry watching movies like 'We are family'. Sometimes I don't want to talk to anyone else other than my cat and a bag of chips. Sometimes I wish I could explain what makes me this way and not sound lame/hopeful for a weird Freudian explanation. Sometimes I'm just me. And sometimes, I hope I'm funny.

P.S - Totally proud about the rhyme in the last sentence. Hi-five-ing a million angels :D

Leaving, left and gone.

What could break your heart more intensely? When you know that a storm is approaching, that it is going to be a bad one and you better prepare for it or when you are looking up at the clouds and they conspire to suddenly separate, to expose the harsh sunlight to your unsuspecting eyes? Does the anticipation of pain make it more bearable? It is like when the surgeon comes out of the operating room and tells you that you shouldn't be hopeful. You prepare yourself, there might be a splinter that would start to break your heart, vein by vein, artery by artery, until all that is left is a mess of blood and oxygen. Would it be less painful if you never knew that there would be a splinter someday?

I wouldn't have time

To prepare for goodbyes

The thought is too painful

To get over with laments and sighs,

Come tomorrow,

When I wait for a smile,

Knock on my door,

And tell me it is futile,

Tell me you intended to let me know

As I cry over the abrupt adieu,

Tell me it was a last moment call,

Ask me to think about it from your point of view,

Maybe I'll hate you for it,

I'll always believe that you lied,

Maybe I wouldn't know what to say,

Maybe I'd be happy to be deprived,

Of awkward pauses and clumsy farewells,

Declaration of promises neither will keep,

Happy to be woken up sharply,

From a nightmare ridden sleep...

P.S - I can't begin to comprehend how bad that is but somehow had to write something. This made me feel good. I really wanted to rhyme.

Lovers, they try...

...try to whip the stars into compliance. I am thinking about Clive Owen's character's line in 'Closer' (which I liked for some reason. Also made me fall in love with Natalie Portman). He says something about how depressives don't want to be happy. Because then they'd have to start living their lives. Which can be quite depressing.

I wonder if what we perceive as happiness is unique. Happy people almost seem smug to me. They go around thinking that no one could possibly feel as happy as they do. They believe they have a right to comfort others who aren't happy, with empty words. Everything will be fine, trust me. They have the credentials to say so because they are uniquely happy. They think they're the only ones who look at little kids smiling and smile to themselves. They think they're the only ones to understand how beautiful life really is. More importantly, they laugh at their former selves who thought there was a subtlety to melancholy and a charm to sadness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not considering being content here. Nor am I considering being satisfied. Because you can be happy even if you are thinking about how you'd never be satisfied with anything other than critical appreciation for your hypothetical debut novel. You can be happy even when you aren't satisfied with the way things are going, there's always room for improvement isn't there? You can be happy to a point of being discontent with trivial details. You can be happy with mediocre words, nowhere close to accurately describing your present state. This feeling of happiness is unique. Only because it is so simple.

P.S- Watched 'A bout de souffle' ('Breathless' in English) directed by Jean-Luc Godard. I couldn't really understand what the big deal was. Some very beautiful lines in the movie though. An instance: " It's sad to fall asleep. It separates people. Even when you're sleeping together, you're all alone. " by Patricia Franchini (portrayed by Jean Seberg. She is exquisitely charming.)

P.P.S- I am very happy right now :)

Lost Mojo

When I'm too bored(read open to the realization that I can't really write well), I read my previous blog posts and try to remember what I was thinking as I wrote them. I did the same, unsurprisingly, today and realized how very lame I have been. It all comes to a point where every week, my blog has one draft and no post. I'm tired of half written truisms pointlessly butchered and covered in macabre gloss and shine, tired of meandering sentences with absolutely nothing new to express and tired of words that lead nowhere and make me forget the whole...I forget what I really wanted to say.Anyhoo, I've lost count of the number of days it has been since I last read a book or last watched a movie. It feels like I have no patience to read or watch anything anymore(well except 'Arrested Development'. It's a shame they ended the series) I have been too busy trying to and mostly failing to care about something I really wouldn't dream caring about. You know that concept of user transparency in Distributed Systems? You don't?! *Horror* You are that user! Anyway, I do and I wish I were the user who was the one not bothered about implementation level details, hidden from the working and functioning of a Distributed System. But no, I have to worry about random trivia that I could have lived without. By the way, did you know that the name 'Phoebe' of the character Phoebe Buffay in Friends might have been inspired by Holden Caulfield's sister, Phoebe, in Catcher in the Rye?

P.S- This was cathartic to a point that it made me happy. Well, almost as happy as seeing that green statement on the console that says 'Build successful'.

"Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Holding a flashlight, up to the sky, to look for the stars...

Sometimes it feels like we're doomed for sadness. That the dry river bed of tears is not barren yet. The dark we hide under, the shadows of the past, of regrets and old habits, shielding us from the light. Would we go blind if we stare at it for too long? Something so beautiful and life giving that we're terrified of what it might bring, what it might nurture from years of wasted presence, the microbial dreams it might destroy. Sometimes it is just fear cloaked under more courageous virtues of boredom and laziness that prevents us from walking out into the light. One new day, when we are too lost in the darkness to realize, the light will creep in and illuminate us, toe by toe, finger by finger. When the clouds above rumble and threaten to flood the rivers, when the wall we lean against seems farther and farther, the light will rush to us and slowly whisper "Wake up, it's time to go."

The tiny explosion of dust
As a rain drop hits the earth
The distant rumble
Of approach, anticipation
Runs through my veins
As premature release
Lets my restraint
Evaporate like virga.
The coolness of the blade
Against my wrist
Tiny puncture wounds
Discrete, slow, methodical
Unfasten me.
Waves of consciousness
Crash against the surreality of my brain,
You are the only universe
Visible, probable, possible
The breath caught in my ribs
Releases in your tight embrace
And falls short
Of a few inches
To touch your hollow heart...

Be kind, rewind

I walked alone on the long winding road when you came along and offered me a ride. I should have refused. But it was a hot day and I was tired walking all by myself. So I accepted the offer and you got me closer to my destination, on my path towards self destruction.I'm not out of breath at the very least. The journey seems shorter now.

P.S-It doesn't make sense to me either. Love this song by the way.

Your name is the splinter.

He adjusts the wick with careful fingers and reaches over for the canister of palm oil.He lights the lamp and joins hands in prayer.Outside it grows colder as the oil gradually solidifies.

The crow has flown

The past few days have been going so well, with every little event making me go "I'm so going to write about this!" and then promptly letting it slip my mind.There used to be a time when there were so many words and phrases going through my head that I just had to pen them down.I miss those days.Sure I wrote a lot of stuff that was silly, unoriginal and hackneyed but I did write, dint I?Maybe I'm just too, un-feeling, these days.You know, I write when I'm either too depressed or too high(hyper excited, hard to settle down type).Lately I have been happier, and not just sporadically.The graph is going constant and that bugs me a little.I have been reading Murakami and I'm still too speechless to write anything about him or the book('Kafka on the Shore'). I will write something about him, he's too much on my mind to let go that easily.Let me get my thoughts back.Right now they are off tracking cats with Nakata.

P.S- It is sad that the first few searches that come up on Google when you type 'palm' are something to do with Personal Digital Assistants and Operating Systems.Palm is so much more.

She looked at the air conditioner with disdain. Just a few minutes ago, as little drops of sweat rolled down her back, the spoiled brat, her employer's son, had turned off the AC muttering something about a bai not needing it.She swept the dust off the floor in precise movements so that little specks of it would not remain behind.The brat had now moved to his room, after trying to avoid stepping on the dirt and making an even bigger mess.She sighed.Kids were so clumsy nowadays.She remembered how she'd had such a graceful gait growing up that everybody thought she'd make a great dancer.Even now, men looked at her retreating figure with appreciation and women with envy as she strolled past the Saturday market, picking up tamatar and methi, never bhindi(Rs.12 per kilo!). She sighed, dreading the prices that'd be put up this week. She continued sweeping, beneath the couch, behind the bookshelf, stray strands of dog fur(they had a big dog with long golden fur, it was quite ugly) kept entangling in the broom. She stopped for a few minutes and looked outside the window.Her eyes automatically searched for the wall clock on the wrong wall and then rested upon it finally and she registered the time.Rich people and their tinted glass windows, no sense of what time it was and how the day would be. She remembered how cloudy it was that morning.Maybe the same weather had continued.After all, she'd already spent three hours on the twelfth floor.So many things could have changed outside.She took a few steps towards the window.She had the strong urge to push it open and let the fresh air in(it was a sliding window, she instantly realised a second later).There were little droplets of sweat on her upper lip and her scalp felt wet with perspiration.Her breathing was heavy.Somehow, with the subtle, invisible beckoning of the window, she felt her day and her life letting go of her.There was nothing to worry about, not the absent husband, not the son's education, not the dwindling currency in the small, metal box she hid under her bed, not the past which she rued so often, the longing for days in school before she left to join her mother to see the inside of people's dirty laundry and hear the scrape of steel wool against aluminium.Life would all be good if only she opened the window.She felt light and easy as she slid the frame and let the air in.Behind her, the gathered dust particles scattered and settled into positions they were looking for.

P.S-No title yet, if you can think of a good one, please do.
P.P.S-If you relate the Rs.12 per kilo bhindi thing to 3 idiots, you have serious issues.However if you do realize that tamatar was once Rs.40 per kilo, you've my blessings!

Resolutely irresolute!

Yeah, I tried to resist this whole new year affair, you know, wondering how freaking quickly 2009 passed(it so did, I swear!) and looking back on what was good and what was bad and the usual attachment of great importance to such a trivial event.I did not wish anyone voluntarily, just managed to say 'Same to you' to anyone who believed that a year that started with an examination(O.S exam at that) can be happy.Uber-optimistic.Whatever.

I make resolutions every year, announce it to whoever will listen like a classic jackass and then get laughed at when I break each one of my resolutions the very next day(I think the shortest span has been two hours, when I promised myself I wouldn't eat any cakes and assorted high calorie junk and ended up gorging on three pieces of horrible, chocolate cake, not that it being chocolate had anything to do with it being horrible, I think the eggs were bad or something) But this year, I somehow have a stronger resolve to keep up at least few of the resolutions I make. Here's a list of things I plan to achieve by the end of 2010(Brain says "Achieve?Yeah right!"):

1)Read at least 50 books.
Which implies at least one book per week.It is not a very big number but inspired by Falstaff (who happens to be someone I sort of worship), I'll keep a count this year.Started off with 'The Motorcycle Diaries' by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. It was a delightful read, some larger-than-life phrases strewn around unnecessarily and surprisingly not very descriptive of the natural beauty of Latin America.I took three days to complete it, which is terrible by the way.But hey, I had an exam to write!(I hear laughter in my head.) Started with 'The Trial' by Franz Kafka today.Will complete it by tomorrow hopefully.I plan to read all the novels written by:
i) Jane Austen.
ii) Virginia Woolf
iii) E.M Forster
and also any novel(at least one novel) written by Roberto Bolano, Philip Roth, John Updike and Ernest Hemingway. I hope to read more of Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ian McEwan. Anybody interested, my birthday is on the third of February and I celebrate most of the national holidays.


2) Do something about my *ahem*
Well if you dint get that, I plan to somehow do something about my(in hushed tones) weight. I usually never keep up any sort of a regime when it comes to diet and exercise.2010 might be different.Fingers crossed.


3)Learn a new language.
I want to say a foreign language but I'm open to any right now.


4)Try to be a 9 point someone.
Yes, I actually typed that.This semester was spent being over confident and dusting textbooks a day prior to my exams which led to quite an average performance(decent in fact) but it was abysmally disappointing to me. I'm hoping to take more of an(a long pause) interest in my present domain.Who knows, might turn out to be fun.


5)Try and be good.
It isn't all that hard.This includes fighting less with Amma, being punctual, helping out Amma at home, hanging out with my friends more often, keeping to myself, trying to be not depressed or apathetic all the time.It can't be that hard, can it?


6)Be less self-involved.
Wait a second.What do you know?This is the fastest I've ever broken any of my resolutions! :)


Have a good year!

P.S-I really must come up with better titles.

Momentary lapses of...facial muscles?

She stands near the door, going through her bag, apparently looking for her keys. I know that she is trying to put on that elaborate act of fumbling through the contents of her bag just to avoid looking up to catch me stare at her. She has to look up sometime. I persevere. She looks up half a second later. I smile. I know that she will begin thinking about all the metaphors she can use for my 'impish' or 'wicked' or what was the other word? Damn, I forget. Not that I care. I always told her she was too romantic and should stop dreaming away and get real. She hadn't noticed me all this time even as I sat right behind her. Maybe it worked. That's a first. I can't tell what she is thinking right now. She is usually quick on the uptake, she must have already written half a piece of prose on my, what was that word again? smile. Her face is impassive. She is totally still, expressionless. I'm a little hopeful, waiting that she won't break the spell. Then her face lights up as she gives me a big, toothy smile.Just when I thought I was done with this!When will she ever remember that she has gotten over me?Damn!Better look down now before she makes up something else...