She had a certain beauty that could only be described as otherworldly. She had a fountain of big, brown inviting curls falling from her shoulders to her waist; the type of hair that was meant to be touched. She looked at the world through calm green eyes that almost seemed like clear crystals. Her eyes were also warm and had a sparkle of wit. Her red lips were full and always curved in a graceful smile. Her skin was like porcelain and her every move was a fluid action. She was certainly enthralling.

            Even in her present pregnant state she was glowing and now as she sang in church she almost looked holy. She was generally an optimistic person whom you rarely see frowning. Which is why Thomas was immensely worried when he saw his sister’s forehead slightly furrowed.

            “Is something wrong Carline?” Thomas, her younger brother asked. Thomas was just as stunning looking as his sister. He had the same piercing emerald eyes but with blonde wavy hair that he wore up to his shoulders in layers. He always had a serene face that stole sighs from women. He looked like an angel.

            She smiled weakly at him and squeezed his hand to reassure him. She didn’t like worrying Thomas especially now that he had a lot on his mind. He had a lot of responsibilities to fulfill because she couldn’t.

            “Nothing is wrong. I just get tired easily lately since I am already nearing my due date,” she answered while rubbing her belly affectionately.

            “Which due date are you referring to?” he said grimly. He regretted the words immediately as her smile faltered before she could make an effort to keep it in place.

            “Hush now brother. We shouldn’t be discussing about such gloomy topics at the moment. We are in the house of our Father,” she softly scolded her brother but he looked unconvinced. Their ages are separated by a single year so they have always remained close and attuned to each other. They each knew what the other truly felt and thought. There were no secrets between them.

            Thomas has always known Carline with a smile on her face and from the start he has vowed to always protect that smile. He loved her dearly and now the time has come to execute his promise to the fullest extent.

            I must do this for her, he thought.

            A muffled groan caught his attention. It was Carline. She was bending over the pew clutching her womb. Her eyes squeezed shut in pain but then she smiled slightly and opened them to look at Thomas.

            ‘It’s time,” she whispered.

            Thomas nodded and began assisting her out of the church. Almost immediately people began to look at them.

            “She’s going to give birth!” one whispered excitedly.

            “I hope it’s a girl,” another suggested.

            “She would be gorgeous just like her,” someone agreed.

            The walk out the small church seemed to take forever to Thomas and Carline. They wanted to make a quick escape with no one noticing but apparently that couldn’t happen. Every curious gaze was on them as they made their way out. Carline just smiled at them all without really hearing what they were saying. Thomas looked dead serious. He was concentrating on the plan.

            He was thankful that he had the good sense to park near the church so they didn’t have to walk too far. He quickly opened the backseat door to let Carline in and ran to the driver’s seat. He wasted no time and soon they were on the road at a frightening speed.

            They arrived at their town house in practically no time. The midwife was already there waiting for them. She opened the doors and ran to assist Carline. She gently supported her inside the house into the downstairs room where everything was already prepared for her giving birth.

            “Gently now, my dear,” the midwife said as they passed through the corridor. Thomas sped up the stairs of their home only to come down immediately but with a number of suitcases in his hands. He put them down near the front doors then went straight to Carline. He knelt down on the floor next to the bed where she lay and held her hand. She squeezed his hand.

            ‘I’m here,” he assured her. She smiled at him and she began to experience labor once again.

            Exactly as the sun was disappearing into the horizon making way for night, the child was born. Carline laid her head on the pillow. She was panting and glistening with sweat but looked as beautiful as ever. Thomas never left her side during the whole process. Right now his emerald eyes searched hers, pleading that she was all right. Carline gazed at her little brother and smiled her usual beatific smile. He relaxed automatically but tensed again as the midwife came back into the room carrying a small bundle wrapped in soft white cotton. Two pairs of eyes darted to look toward the midwife and the child she delicately held in her arms. She smiled as she laid the baby next to the mother. Thomas stood to have a better look. Carline and Thomas looked calm but inside they were extremely nervous at the next words they knew the midwife would speak.

            “Congratulations,” she greeted happily looking at both of them thoughtfully. The suspenseful pause was killing them. “It’s a gorgeous baby girl.”

            Silence enveloped them all. Thomas stared at the midwife praying that he had heard wrong and that any moment now the midwife would correct herself. Carline turned pale with shock then tears began to fall silently down her cheeks. The midwife was silent at first because she was confused.

            Why were these people not rejoicing? She had no idea why they were staring silently at her like that but she stopped worrying when Carline gently picked up the child and gingerly cradled her. She kissed the top of her small head as the tears continued to fall. Thomas remained silently looking on.

            “I’ll leave you all now. If you need any help or if you experience problems please call me,” the midwife excused herself. Thomas went to escort her to the door and left Carline alone with the newborn.

            She continued to softly cry as she gazed into her daughter’s beautiful face. She was indeed beautiful like everyone expected. She traced a finger along her baby’s cheek, so fair like hers. Her eyes were not round like Carline’s but slightly slanted. She did however inherit her mother’s intense green eyes but made a striking contrast with her raven black hair.

            Black hair, she sighed. Just like her father’s. She struggled to push away the mage of that particular man. It would only bring back emotions she couldn’t afford to dwell on right now. Her expression suddenly turned serious.

            “Why did you have to be a girl, my love?” she stroked her baby’s hair. The baby stirred but welcomed her mother’s touch. “The plan must now continue more so than before.”

            Carline gently pressed her child closer to her warm breast. She sighed and let a few more tears roll down. She again kissed her child and kept her eyes on her.

            “I will save you, my little one. Forgive me but I must.”

*(k)*(i)*(s)*(y)*(a)*(n)*(g)*

Ahhh, who can forget this recent folksy remark made just days ago by the lovely Sarah Palin to Joe Biden during their debate. But within what seems mere minutes (but was, in fact, about 24 hours), Gov. Palin attacked Barack Obama and suggested he was "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” As I wrote about in an earlier post, she was referring to Bill Ayers whom Barack Obama has called "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8." 

But what are other sources saying about this? The New York Times states:

"the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers."

CNN Political Ticker:

"False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now palling around, or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are....CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved."

The Washington Post called the Obama-Ayers link "a tenuous one." 

The list goes on. But Palin is smear-happy, even going against her own running-mate's wishes.  While talking to neoconservative columnist Bill Kristol, Palin said about Barack Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

"To tell you the truth, Bill, I don't know why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that -- with, I don't know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn't get up and leave -- to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."

Sen. McCain had said not all that long ago:

"I think that when people support you, it doesn't mean you support everything they say. Obviously, those statements are things none of us would associate ourselves with."

In fact, here he is elaborating on that very topic:

Well, doggone it, Sarah, what were you thinking? 

Patrick Ruffini, a Republican operative who worked on Bush’s reelection campaign, said today about McCain's choice of bringing up the Obama-Ayers connection: 

"...he should have been doing it back in July. Starting now appears desperate."

Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, posted this today:

McCain and his campaign now are acting out of frustration and a touch of desperation. With four short weeks to go, and a campaign where McCain is losing nationally, losing in the majority of the battleground states, with a diminishing number of hotly competitive blue state targets and an expanded number of red state ones, and with a campaign terrain dominated by economic turmoil, McCain needs to change the conversation.

Now, of course, the Obama campaign is hitting back by bringing up the Keating Five economic scandal I referred to in yesterday's post. Here's a 13 minute documentary put out today by the Obama campaign:

Now it needs to be said: In February 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found McCain guilty of nothing more than "poor judgment" and declared his actions were not "improper nor attended with gross negligence." In other words, McCain attended the meetings but did nothing else to influence the regulators. But it is this "poor judgment" that is in question here as the very same judgement cost taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the biggest of the S&L scandals. In addition, 17,000 Lincoln investors lost $190 million. Slate.com adds:

The failure of the Lincoln Savings and Loan and other S&L’s pushed the country into a recession, costing the U.S. government $126 billion dollars in FDIC insurance payouts to investors. All of this came to a crescendo during the first year of the presidency of George H.W. Bush, who pushed through the S&L bailout plan to keep the economy afloat.

Sound familiar?

So what exactly WAS McCain's relationship with Keating? Slate.com continues: 

After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights.

And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.

And what was McCain's response to all this? Mccainkeatingfive.com says this:

John McCain admitted to intentionally filing false income tax returns to defraud the IRS by not claiming thousands of dollars in gifts McCain and his family received from Charles Keating and Keating’s company. Years later, when the IRS noticed Keating’s company had written off the gifts to McCain as business expenses, McCain fessed up and admitted filing false returns and made a “donation” to the U.S. Treasury to cover the amount he defrauded American tax payers. 

And what of Cindy McCain's investment? After Keating was later convicted on 73 counts of fraud, conspiracy, and other crimes, Cindy McCain sold her investment for $15,000,000.

As Joe Biden stated, the past is prologue. Unfortunately for John McCain, unlike his accusations against Barack Obama, none of Mr. McCain's past associations or history here is in the least bit tenuous or speculative but, in fact, well documented.

O Peugeot Prologue HYmotion4 é equipado com um motor híbrido que gera, ao todo, 227 cv de potência. Desses, 200 cv vêm do bloco a combustão 2.0l HDi, enquanto os outros 27 cv vêm do motor elétrico. A emissão de poluentes por quilômetro rodado é baixa, 109 gramas de CO2, segundo a marca. O consumo de combustível também é outro ponto forte do conceito, que pode rodar até 24,3 quilômetros com apenas um litro de diesel.

Como seu nome sugere, a tração nas quatro rodas traz uma inovação de grande destaque. Estreando no veículo de produção, o proprietário poderá escolher se a força será despejada totalmente na dianteira (neste caso o motor a combustão começa a atuar), na traseira (motor elétrico, apenas) ou em ambos eixos (combustão e elétrico).

Por Fillipe Vivas

There is a report that Richard Cobden founded a Baptist chapel in the village of Sabden Under Pendle Hill, south of Manchester. It seems that it was built by James and John Bury of Accrington in 1798.

More papers show that Henry Bury of 3, Parsonage, top of Albert Street, Manchester, established in 1851 (formerly of Adelphi Works, Salford), sold steam heated chests for heating lithographs and copper plates.

A certificate of patent was issued to Henry Bury, machinery broker, of 45, Port House, Piccadilly, Manchester, for a combined glazing and embossing calendar for finishing cuffs, collars, fronts, printed show cards, fancy Christmas cards, labels, tickets, etcetera on January 29th 1896. Thus was my father's father.

Henry Bury had four sons, Henry (my father), James, Charles and Harold and one daughter, Ada. His wife died when they were still quite young. He was unable to care for them so they all went to America as indentured servants. A person in America paid their passage, and then they had to work for them to pay off the debt.

My father was born in 1875, so this must have been around 1890. My father told me that he worked on ranches in the summers, and studied during the winters, getting a place in McMaster's University in Montreal. I think it was mostly in the wheat belt in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. He aimed to become a minister. However, his father died and he had to return to Manchester to see to his affairs. It seems that his father developed a paranoid psychosis and accused his partner and others of cheating him. He was eventually taken to Strangeways asylum where he died.

My father continued his studies at Owen's College, which later became Manchester University, and obtained a BA in divinity. After this he did some peripatetic preaching around the country. One place was the chapel at Reading where he met my mother. Finally he became the preacher of Astley Bridge Baptist Chapel in Bolton. He married my mother in 1911/12 and they lived at "Ingleton", Seymore Road, Astley Bridge.

My mother, Bessie May Hill, was one of a large, middle class family. Her father, Ebenezer Hill was a leather merchant, originally from Northamptonshire. He had a thriving wholesale leather business in Reading, selling leather to local cobblers, and a shop in the High Street selling leather goods. He had married twice and had four sons and three daughters. My mother was the eldest daughter of his first wife whose maiden name was Saunders, (the origin of my middle name). They seem to have had a happy family life and were brought up as strict Baptists.

In early life the eldest son developed a psychosis and was put in a mental hospital and forgotten as was the way of things in those days. The youngest girl, my Aunt Laura, was very clever and was one of the first women to get a place at Oxford University where she got a degree in Classics and English and became a High School teacher. She later developed a psychosis which took the form of a religious mania and eventually had to go to hospital.

By now attitudes had changed and she was supported by the family and visited regularly, particularly by my mother. After her menopause she recovered enough to be able to live independently, supported by a family trust fund. After old Ebenezer died, the two sides of the family quarrelled bitterly over the business in Reading, E.Hill & Sons.It's now W.H.Smiths. My mother's siblings were Hedley, Bernard, Leonard and Pricilla and Laura the last two by Ebenezer's second wife.

Science describes us all as simple beings, protons and electrons, negative and positive charges, a writhing mass of surface tension over a liquid core.  So what on earth causes attraction I will never know.  I do know however, that at its core, it is basic animal instinct.  Something beneath that writhing surface tension bubbles and boils and needs intimate contact. In my case, that instinct wasn’t just a base need or simple reproductive function; when the good lord was handing out dysfunctions, he was kind enough to give me quite possibly the most pleasant chemical imbalance in the world: hyper-sexuality.

Sensual disease if I might say so myself. However, it was a curse and a blessing all wrapped in to one. When I was younger I remember feeling strange twinges in the base of my spine or the pit of my stomach. Itches really, the sort that needed to be scratched, but I hadn’t the foggiest on how to go about it.  It’s embarrassing to say now, that despite being matured far beyond my years,  I didn’t understand sexual urges or needs. At least not until Mikhail came along. Soon itches became clawing sensations, a gnawing in the deepest part of me, and he had the key to unlock that cage, to free that feline image cramped into every corner of its steely grasp and let it free; rampant on the defenseless masses.

I felt like Alice, thrown headlong into the rabbit hole, falling, falling, past societal acceptance, past prudish impulses, straight into the pit of things, to passion.  In a short year, I’d learned what skin to skin felt like, what it was like to scratch that itch, and how good it could really feel to just give in to the body.  Hungry, I gobbled up every source of information I could find from Cosmo to gynecological pamphlets. And in my hunt, on a more amusing note, discovered that the reproductive diagram really does look a lot like six flags - rather befitting if you ask me.

Nothing compared, however, to that first touch, that lingering brush of fingertips over my skin. Lips pressed feverishly to lips, trailing endless paths into fleshy oblivion.  Feeling full in an indescribable way, like all that time I had been empty somewhere.  Not in that high-schoolish, I found my soul mate sort of way, but in a way a puzzle just looks better put together. Or in my case, a grinding, passionate puzzle.

Photography sessions would get out of hand as I slowly learned the power of my new found sensuality. Still shy in my own right, I’d learned the power of body language, simple eye contact and gestures were all it took most times.  Fumbling like a teenage virgin, he’d come stumbling across the room, clothes strewn akimbo across the floor, that one stubborn foot still trailing his jeans.  Chest heaving as he’d reach out, sometimes a passionate embrace, sometimes it became a power struggle, his hand wrapped tightly in my hair, head pulled back throat exposed.  It never hurt, never felt like fright, just ultimate submission to the alpha male.

It’s that sort of love that led me off the beaten path. In a world where every day is a struggle for equality, it was hard to understand one domineering young woman’s lust for the inequality of a master/slave relationship.  Many readers now would be astounded to know the author, their jaws wagging at the thought. I thought of it as a learning experience, relinquishing control to someone much more experienced in sex. Little did I know the sort of effect it would have on my libido and heart.

One character will be making a decent number of appearences, about 2 are regulars, 4 others are support characters and the rest are small misc castings. Anyone expressing interest can email me with a sample of their work, or you can wait until the official process begins which will probably be hosted at VAC. It is prefered if you can get as little background noise and static as possible, though I can easily edit the audio if it is unavoidable. Please note it will be a fair amount of time before this will be undertaken so please be patient. Thanks in advance.

Oh, and I might as well mention the main characters and their voice actors now. After samples of each of the remaining characters' dialouge is released for casting purposes, those characters will only be revealed to the chosen actors in order to maintain some secrecy as to their plot significance. And for general euphoria and interest, I will release the prologue very soon, as soon as I edit it.

Characters' call sign (profession) - Voice actor

Shuffles (Retreival) - Venzael

Pockets (Demolition) - Shimrra_3

Birdie (Technologist) - Jonno_Gradian

Muesli (Reconnaissance) - Eyes

Threads (Reconnaissance) - Threads

Flags (Sniper) - Myself

End post, enjoy the wait.

I just wiped out a few hundred blog posts without hesitation as a response to an impasse I face in my life today. As a writer I wish to resurrect and revisit the early days of my writing (kindergarten i.e.) and start from there. In a Zen scenario I have before me an empty canvas and a brush dipped in black ink at readiness.

The pen is mightier than the sword; it is said. I however do not agree. Such an assertion would tip the scales in favour of intelligence of the mind over that of the body. As such this being the ruling of the day causing more of us to ignore the physical plane entirely and seek growth only via the mental plane. I seek to balance the two in my life towards a harmonious existence. This would be akin to the ideology of the ancient Japanese Samurai warriors who were well versed in the killing arts whilst also being proponents of fine arts such as calligraphy, painting and poetry.

I begin my journey with this prologue. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.

Every time I move out of a place, a barrage of boxes comes with me, some of them that were never even opened but mysteriously manage to cling on… like there is a ‘boxed’ conspiracy going on… but I was wrong… not just a conspiracy, it’s a revolution. Here is the autobiography of a box that I had a chance to converse to in my living room during ‘after-move-slumped-down-resting-period’.

 The Autobiography-

I still remember the day like it happened yesterday. Or perhaps it did. I am still dazed. I was young, freshly off the assembly line from the recycling facility, full of new ideas within me.  My name is Brownine and I am a box. My friends called me Mr. Idea box – I always thought inside the box, and I was looking ahead to my future. I was built strong – double layered recycled cardboard hemmed across all of my edges. I was the state of the art box, ready to tackle the most difficult tasks of the world. I even had two little openings on my sides for humans to stick their hands right by my neck to pick me up. I liked humans. I looked at them cheerfully and aspired to hold true to their beliefs that I can hold great things. It started as the happiest day of my life when this human picked me up. I don’t know his name or don’t understand the language. All the humans look exactly the same to me. Nonetheless, I was very happy. 

They called him the ‘Leader-Box’, the heaviest of us all, sitting in the dead center of the ‘The Box World’, filled with magazines and old text books, thus carrying the wisdom of the old and the new and revered equally among all the boxes of the free world, including the spare kitchen-dishes box and the extra-cleaning-supplies-bought-from-Costco-and-long-forgotten box. He must be able to sense that our box world is about to collapse. I think he got his clue from the sudden change in our environment, with suitcases (always alien to us) beginning to disappear mysteriously one by one and the new boxes like me started coming in their places. I could never find out how he did it. I was in awe of him, despite his age evident by his outer shell, he was sitting tall carrying the entire load and with the voice that would shake the world. I immediately knew what I would want to become in my life, if I lived as long as he did. How many great things he has seen, how many great box-worlds he has been to, I wondered!

The great leader box called upon a meeting of all the boxes of the free-box world; old and new, big and small, native and foreign (with their flat smooth surfaces), even those fancy little boxes who brought the greatest gizmos known to mankind, Ipods and Laptops, with their countless silky-smooth flaps, never belonged with us brown ones, but show up anyway in the spirit of ‘Boxity’ (just like humanity for you, O my human friend).

He said - ‘How can we solve this ages-old problem of the complete destruction of our environment by these vicious humans? They love us when they bring us in but then leave us in this dark, damp god-forsaken place to rot with all these moths and silver fish crawling in us… and when we finally accept out fate, they move us out of here! How cruel can they be?’

“Not anymore!” said the leader box, “we shall retaliate; we shall get together and make them suffer! I say let’s make them remember each time they put their hands on any one of us, for the years and years to come…. You can take a Box out of storage space… but you can never take storage space out of a box! We’ll store so much that they’ll have tears when picking us up. I say let’s get heavy….fill yourselves up to the top ... and then some!! I say lets get sharp… you, Flatpan, my dear kitchen box friend, put those knives out, so that you get at least one of them…. I say LET’S GIVE THEM HELL! Now, I understand that some of us may not survive this ordeal, but it’s the sacrifice I am willing to make. And to prove that, I am going to weigh so much that if any human comes near me, they’ll bleed through their fingers!!! O the sweet victory, I can taste it now!!

So excited was the world that the boxes started ripping apart the tapes that held them together, some of them made holes in them and let more bugs come in and eat away the precious old clothes (to be donated to salvation army) and little newspaper clippings they were holding… the kitchen boxes pushed the knives right through them to support the cause….. Even the boxes with carrying the linens got right next to the wall to collect dirt and the rain water that seeped through.

It was beautiful.

I, in all this excitement, got my flaps on some old chemical engineering and Forbes magazines that were lying around in one corner. I put all of them inside me, but still had some more room left, so I started picking up the small boxes and tossed them right inside me. I was bulging from all the places. I was the biggest of them all… and the heaviest! And that was the moment when I felt it. I knew how the leader box got all his wisdom. I was dreaming. I was dreaming finance. I was dreaming chemistry. I suddenly started understanding the world around me, the human world.. It was amazing. I started forgetting where I was, I just wanted to do some experiments and make a lot of money! I wanted to be the Einstein of the Wallstreet!

A gentle yet firm flap on my back from the Leader-box brought me back to the box-world, and he said to me, “It’s a boon to know all these things, yet it’s a curse to carry them. Knowledge is power and with power comes responsibility, whether you want it or not”.

Nevertheless, the day dreaded by all of us finally came … I never saw such pain, such misery, and such sacrifice in my life. It was a massacre. Never saw so many boxes dying, their flaps just flapping away like the wood chips back in the factory. I wouldn’t know where to begin and where to end the events that took place that day. So I’ll just leave them for now as a memory within me. I still cry for that day, so much that I started growing mold. Our Leader sacrificed himself. For us. We shall never forget him. Never.

Now, I am the leader of whatever world is left of us… and I feel him in me, literally, since you put his flaps inside me, to make me even stronger..  Even after his death he lives on! O my great leader box. I salute you!

Epilogue-

Every now and then I visit the storage room to dump more stuff in it to help rebuild his new box-world. The new leader is still strong, waiting patiently for the time when he would start a revolution. If it had eyes they'd have been RED. One of these visits, I asked him if he was something else, anything, what would he want to be? He said, “A Collapsible Plastic bin”.

    Life however has a different meaning. A corresponding state, existence, or principle of existence conceived of as belonging to the soul. The meaning of life is hard to explain. As you continue to read this story of my life, I will show you my meaning for life, and how life changes from day to day.

Stay tuned for more chapters.. coming soon.

There’s always something to be tweaked and scratched and altered and fixed, at least in my long fiction.

I’ve revamped and redecorated the prologue and first chapter for my novel Kings & Queens more times than I can even count: baseball intro—no not gripping, too kiddy—mock annihilation intro—scratch that too, for being a melodramatic cheat—back to baseball but with a completely different angle, darker tone and conflict. I suppose I should keep all my drafts, but I don’t. If I’m dissatisfied with something, why keep it around? It’s clutter to me. Some writers like to keep a record of how many versions they’ve had and changes they’ve made and they file them alphabetically with a color-coded graph and everything. Wow. I’m amazed at that level of organization. Skills I greatly lack. I'll definitely need to keep track of versions when I submit to agents, but for now, I just don't care.

I know where I started and can recall the big upheavals, but what I’m more interested in knowing is where I end up. I want the finished product to be excellent.

So again, for the umpteenth time, I’ve changed my prologue...a little bit. It’s always been short, but I hope it’s more gripping with it's new intro. Now I’ve got to go switch new for old on my various excerpts all over the web. I'll probably change it again. At some point I WILL let go of it. I promise.

Does editing drive you crazy? When does it ever stop?

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

I don't know where I heard that, I think that it was "The Road Less Travelled", but I don't think a truer word has ever been spoken.

I think that mine has been exceptionally so in recent times. I have the life of a soap star, and not all the qualities necessary to overcome it. Nor, for example, do I live in the East End which I've always thought had one great asset.

It is a place of people. I live alone, in rural Ireland. I don't drive, and there are many reasons for that. Much as I desire it, it's not likely to change any time soon. So life is, above everything else, lonely.

I am among the most interesting people I know, and yet I have not seen a single soul today. I suspect that this is not a unique situation, but one that is replicated throughout the island. As communities break down and rivalries build up, the space for the little, local interactions of my mother's and grandmother's generation evaporates. It's a pity. It's a disaster.

If you were to meet me at a social function tonight, I'd dazzle but right now I'm bored and lonely. I'm proud too, too proud to ask for help. It's been a long time since I got some help. It's been a long time since I simply had a conversation.

I'm strong though, and I'll go on. But, I'm pretty damn lonely and there's no-one here. That sucks. I don't want online support, I don't want anything.

What I want to do is to write my book. I want to sit here and write about all that has happened to me in the last years and try to be ok again.I want it took leak from my fingertips onto the screen, in orderly lines so that I can try to be OK again.

So here I go...

CHAPTER ONE

Kim Se Eun watched in silence as the airplane flew past the huge sky above her. Her eyes squirted a little to avoid the sun ray shinning in her face. ‘Goodbye Young Bae...’ Whispering those words only in her heart, Se Eun then turned away from the clear blue skies and headed back to the black limousine that was waiting for her.

“Heading to where now, Ms Kim?” The chauffeur, Suk Ho, asked with his signature warm smile as he opened the door of the car for the young lady.

Slipping into the back seats of the car, Se Eun paused for a thought.

“School.”

Her reply surprised Suk Ho. He made a small turn around in his driver seat and stared skeptically at her. “To s- school?” No one could blame him for his reaction as Se Eun had not been attending her new school since the beginning of the year. Why would she have the sudden interest in attending lessons? Moreover, Young Bae had just left…

“Yes?” Se Eun’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

“A- Alright.” Returning to his position, Suk Ho started the engine of the car, all ready to drive off. But before doing anything more, he looked at Se Eun’s reflection in the front mirror and revealed a small thoughtful smile.