[video]
This is my list for the day; these may sound like ordinary things that every ordinary person says to himself or herself at the start of every day. When these people say these things in the morning it’s slightly simpler than when I say them. They mean, start my diet, stop smoking, get out and about a bit, move on from my annoying ex, and excel in work. I’m dealing with something a lot worse, something that most people don’t even know about, and it’s something I’ve been dealing with since I was 14 years old, maybe even younger.
So, let me explain to you how a normal day in my life plans out. I wake up every morning for work at 6am, this isn’t so that I can get a nice long shower, be early for work, or eat a massive breakfast, this is so that I can masturbate at least 3 times before leaving for work at 8.30am. Then my boring job goes on slowly hour-by-hour like almost everyone else I know. Then I get home, and again my life is pretty normal, I make myself dome dinner and sit in front of the TV.
Then my alarm goes off.
This means that I have 20 minutes, so I open my large patio doors and squeeze through the tiny gap that I create between them. I then crouch down on the floor just behind my long white sofa that veers off slightly to the right. It has a metal open back to the sofa so there are many gaps that I can peer through.
Then I grasp a pillow from the sofa and place it under my knees so that they won’t start hurting later on. Over the road in front I can see a massive row of apartments similar to mine, I start counting how many have lights on and how many don’t. I take out my brown tiny diary that I keep in the left pocket of my work jacket and under the 23rd of July I jot down the numbers that I’d just counted. The brown diary goes back into my pocket and I pull from underneath the sofa a shoebox, inside contains a pair of green army binoculars, you might already be seeing how strange I am. Just like everything else in my house the shoebox has to go back into it’s rightful place, under the sofa.
Now comes the most interesting part of my day, and it’s something I do every day, except from now on of coarse because I’m going to chance.
I sit behind my sofa and watch in turn every window that has it’s light on, which last night was an incredible 24 windows. All these apartments are designed the same way, which means all the windows, are bedrooms. Second from the right is my favorite window, a woman around 24 years old. She a bit of a party animal and can be pretty unpredictable, especially when it comes to the kind of men she brings home, some of them look like they’ve just been dragged of the street and others look like 50 year old business men, I did think that she might have been a prostitute but I followed her to work, she’s not.
Then there’s Mary, she’s actually one of my friends I made the effort to go and introduce myself after I spent almost a week only watching her. I think I’m in love with her, but I’m not sure, I could just be in love with what she does through her window. It’s the same routine almost every night for her, which of coarse reminds me of myself. One night I also caught her glancing out the window for a while, maybe she wouldn’t find me as weird as other people.
So as you can probably tell I am not like most people when I wake up in the morning and say all these things, most people have some control over their lives whereas I have almost none. Learning how to get past this problem of mine is something I intend to do, but my alarm just went off.
So ….
Mon plaisir,
This was the first story i read, and even through i expected the stories to be a little peculiar i didn’t realize quite how strange i would find them. I’m a bit of a sucker for love stories so as i was reading the story i was imagining how their lives would change into a relationship full of romance, and love. Then when the dinner came i almost felt excited at how these two people who i was quite disappointed with were managing to interact with each other. Once again at the end of the story i got my hopes up when the husband honked his horn as i expected them to finally admit to each other how in love they were, and once again was let down by there very cold personalities.
Neighbors
When i began reading this story it wasn’t long after i had finished reading Mon Plaisir so my initial reaction was that it was the opposite type of couple, they were happy and what we would consider as “normal”. They were jealous of the neighbors but what couple don’t have small amounts of jealously for what other people have. Then when i read that the other couple were leaving for a while it didn’t even occur to me that that would be the main point of the story. I found the mans actions very strange at first and with the sexual link to his wife after visiting the apartment i just presumed that the idea of being something else turned this guy on, sort of like role play. Then when the woman joined in on the behaviors for some reason the story seemed to make a lot more sense to me, they were just pinning for different lives, again similar to the couple in Mon Plaisir.
The idea
The idea was a strange read, quite boring i felt as whilst reading it i was looking so check that i really was near the end and the chances of anything drastic happening in this last page was very unlikely. When they were crouching down and peering at the woman across in the other window i thought about voyeuristic behaviors because i’d been researching it for the other assignment, and was thinking that this story may give me some ideas however i didn’t quite understand the relationship between the couple and the watching of someone else.
The Man on the Stairs
I actually really enjoyed reading this short story, it didn’t feel quite as depressing to read as the others, probably because i didn’t sympathize with her problems, i didn’t really like her unlike the wife in Mon Plaisir, i liked her and i wanted up to have the happy ending. I saw the man on the stairs as a metaphor for the like almost straight away and when i read the final line i did doubt myself a little but now looking over the whole story i still see him as a metaphor, im just not quite sure what the metaphor is. When she spoke about rushing through life it reminded me of myself, i am always finding ways to do things in the quickest way possible, even whilst typing this, im typing at a stupid speed to make sure i can write what i have to say as quick as possible.
what do you do in san Francisco
I enjoyed the way this short story was written, and it definitely intrigued me. However i’m not sure if i would carry on reading the story if it were any longer. Like the others i was almost certain it would have a blunt end to it, but unlike the other stories i didn’t mind. I found the main character very normal compared to the other characters. He did seem to be a little voyeuristic however what he was watching and doing seemed pretty normal if you conceder the weirdness of the neighbors.
A grave? Oh, no. A lantern, slaughtered youth,
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred.
(lays PARIS in the tomb)
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry, which their keepers call
A lightning before death! Oh, how may I
Call this a lightning?—O my love, my wife!
Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Thou art not conquered. Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advancèd there.—
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favor can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
Forgive me, cousin.—Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee,
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again. Here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber maids. Oh, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.
Arms, take your last embrace. And, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death.
(kisses JULIET, takes out the poison)
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide.
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy seasick, weary bark.
Here’s to my love! (drinks the poison) O true apothecary,
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
I studied this play during my IB course, and although most people found Shakespeare to be difficult to understand or completely illegible, I really enjoyed it, this plays in particular. I never particularly liked Literature, writing or even reading so finding something that I couldn’t put down before even watching the movie meant something to me. When I first read the assignment I thought of analyzing a poem by Sylvia Plath, as her writing is very graphic however I wouldn’t consider her poems something I enjoyed reading because of the depressing outer layer almost every one of them had. Romeo and Juliet contain a much deeper emotion, especially this particular monologue by Romeo at the end of the play.
In this monologue Romeo finds Juliet’s body in the tomb and thinks she is dead. He speaks about her beauty and how in his last moments on the earth he is happy to have loved her and to have known her. The language used in this monologue is powerful for various reasons,