hair
thoughts drifted into her mind from nowhere. They did not feel like her thoughts. They were too cliched, too repetitive. The same phrases, looping without purpose. Over and over. They were the thoughts of a character in a badly written book. A book written by one of her friends. Ideas of feelings, and bad ones at that. 'She felt sad' 'She felt like her life was lived through a mirror'. Words only. The escalator continued onwards and upwards. The other people looked as she expected them to look. There was a glimmer of hope. The way they were dressed, she could see their pride. The shined shoes. The styled hair. Rituals, probably. The ritual of preparing for the future. The thoughts continued on, filling what would otherwise be a void. The thoughts of the thoughts. She tried to imagine who was thinking the thoughts. Why all these questions? The same questions at the same location at the same time, every day. At 9.10 every day, just before reaching the peak of the escalator, she thought of the blue colour of the wood frame erected around a piece of maintanence. At 9.11 every day, she she thought of how she always thought that.
On the street, the people all walking in the same direction. For a brief few minutes, everybody is going to the same place. They are all moving down the same road. Second by second, they have the same destination - the space directly in front of them. Everybody flying by wire. Flying by wired, she thought, blankly noticing the coffee cup clutched in every hand. A new thought. Not one of hers. Probably something Claire would say. Claire was writing a book once. Then she dropped out, followed her dream, and stopped writing. Is a dream something that should be followed? A dream doesn't seem like a plan. A woman was walking slower than everybody else. People walked around her. She was a hindrance. She was an obstacle. She waddled slightly. Her hair was not styled neatly. She was holding everybody up - did she know? Was she ashamed at her lack of understanding? Or was she oblivious? Never mind. It doesn't matter. Fuck her. Everybody hated her. Stupid, and slow.
At work, the doors opened to reveal more doors. It was underwater. All of the sounds were soft and round like underwater sound. She imagined floating up and across the room. She imagined drowning, her body bobbing up against the ceiling. Calm and soft. Two words that sounded good. Calm and soft. Calm and soft. Sound drifted around this office and formed a kind of rhythm. A kind of soup. A thin soup. She remembered a man on the tube who looked alright to begin with, but up close, made her feel sick. His combed hair, the slight dusting of white on his tired suit jacket. Her own hair. She held some of her hair, and pulled it slightly. Other people's hair sickened her, mostly. The constant shedding. The dropping of decomposing organic matter everywhere. The small white blob of scalp. Hair on clothes. Moulting. Her own hair sickened her sometimes. She should shave it off, like britney.
