The white sheet of an open notebook. Vacillating scribbles, a tentative reproduction of the instructions received in class. Letters lined up in words, words in sentences, sentences in clumsy meanings of a beginner’s learning. Arduous first steps on a long road in pursuit of erudition.
Hours on end with the attention leaned over books. Ideas sucked from the writings into the skull like a slow, laborious sapience vacuum cleaner. A throbbing head, shuffled thoughts, the weight of knowledge cumulated on the eyes.
Walking characters, suddenly floating, then whirling. The white of pages mixed with the black of ink, in a suspended tunnel of abstraction and infinity. The mind, ripped out of reality, simply slurped into another universe, quick as lemonade through a straw on a hot summer day.
In the paper world, a multitude of types: fat, thin, tall, and short. Some with hats, others with stretched arms, some expansive, with long legs, and many in weird poses. Each one with a different sound, all mixed, a growing hullabaloo, more and more gathered symbols, the place more and more jammed.
In a claustrophobic impulse, the escape attempt. A twirl in search of an exit, a bump, a fall, and a scream. Choleric faces suddenly turned to the origin of the disturbance. A desperate run in any direction, followed by warriors, armed with dashes, parentheses, and question marks. Grenades of commas and quotation marks, thrown at the will of the opponents, thirsty for reparation.
The arrival to the edge of the volume, a decisive moment: a gory fight against the ferocious messengers of language or a coward jump into the empty abyss. The fear of death suppressed by mercy in face of the possibility of murder of such necessary instruments of communication; a liberating jump into nothing.
A light flight, like the deep sleep of a brain exhausted by study. Darkness and silence. Then light and the awakening of the city. The face illuminated by the sun and the song of a bird by the window. The beginning of another day of battles. Weapons in hand: pen, pencil, eraser, and sharpener. Today without carelessness or distraction.
Towards victory!
Note: I wrote this text as an exercise during a flash fiction course. The idea was to play with the form of language. I have always heard at school that verbs are the most important part of a sentence. That is why I decided to experiment and see if I could write a story without any verb.
0 Comments