"I wanted to write about something, but I didn't exactly know what."

They walked away into the forest, while I sit and sentence brainstorm. She thought maybe she should stop being lowly scum that seemingly did nothing. "Do you intend for someone to read this?" she asked, "no one will read and feel sorry for you because you write so pessimistically. See, there you are at it again. I guess it's a never ending cycle. So stop thinking about it. Yes, just sentence brainstorm anything, and pretend someone's going to read it if you feel like it because it's just not going to stop being pessimistic."

Anyway after all her ranting, I started up again. Delving themselves into the forest, they could certainly feel a kind of mood, where there was something in the pit of their stomachs, perhaps similar to butterflies, but definitely another non-insectile feeling. Just the majesticness of everything. The morning. The golden hazy beams of a melting sun falling through the trees into nowhere. The uncertainty of what to do in their freedom in the forest. Perhaps it was a national park. Well, then they wouldn't have the freedom to remove anything from the forest.

But who would want to? Everything was perfect just there. Whole, peaceful, free.

She couldn't be silly like the other girls. She just couldn't figure out how to do it, or how they could. She decided that she was just a serious, one-on-one person. Maybe she was lacking something. She wondered if there was anyone else serious and one-on-one like her, or if many people thought they were unique to be serious and one-on-one, when really it wasn't unique because so many people thought it.

She shook her head. Shook her head at everybody; at herself; what wasn't there to shake her head at?

So she thought, what's use of alcohol and drugs when you could be drunk drinking water and high off a bag of Cheetos, staring into blank space in the middle of the night, not caring whether the goddess pulled her chariot at a faster pace or not? Maybe that goddess doesn't care either; look at what she did to her lover. How did she get one anyway?

I was astonished at what she thought. She did sometimes look like a stereotypical deserted and haggard one, sipping or guzzling off some liquor; some clear clear liquid of pure thought and feeling. She wondered what it would be like to slide and bump down the nucleotides of a DNA double helix model. Nah, it reminded her too much of an old Nine-Inch-Nails song. She wondered what it would be like to voice a character in a stop-motion film, or to be one. Not that she wanted to be a character, she just wanted to know what it felt like for them, always jerking around or coming out of nowhere. Stop-motion picture films always somewhat scared her for that reason.

The forest disappeared. Was all lost? What?''

A. Li, '99.