#unrelated i have seven reading assignments to do this weekend. such is life i suppose dsfjgd

[vulpinesaint]

love being an english major. next week for my literary theory and criticism class we're reading donna haraway cyborg manifesto which is so awesome cause i've had a pdf of that open in my tabs for Months and just haven't gotten around to it 😭

[amarantine-amirite]

November Syndrome

Imagine that you're a freshman. You're away from home for the first time, out from under the thumbs of veganism and expectations for high achievement that were previously foisted upon you. You have no sense of obligation other than avoiding being yelled at by parents and school. No discipline. No idea how to schedule anything. No sense of organization or time management. The only reason you ever got anything done before was because you had been emotionally beaten into submission by your higher-ups.

What happens? You go crazy. End of story. For the first two months, you go to every party and social event on campus, then, come November, you go bonkers over how much work you have to do, but you don't actually do any work. Instead of working, you escape into things like writing fanfiction, playing Fortnite, or something else unrelated to your studies. It's almost like you evolve into a master procrastinator.

Worse, you don’t even notice your lack of discipline until there’s no one saying “no” to every one of your ideas. As a premed, one of the courses I had to take was called "Computer Science for Scientific Applications". It sounded better than it was. It involved having to hand-write code. On top of that, we had to write in pen! It sucked. My handwritten braces looked like sideways boobs. It was just awful. What really sucked was that I write in cursive, so I did my code in cursive. The professor was not pleased when I handed my assignments in. Our assignments were graded based on whether or not they worked. We don't know until we hand anything in if it works. We don't test the code ourselves, he runs it for us. He put our assignments were put through a scanner, and the scans would be put through a piece of software that would convert the text on the image of the page into actual text. The text that it scraped would then be entered into the IDE for the language in question. Usually for freshman computer science, the language was Java, but our steam (recall I was in premed at the time) did Javascript. The only sort of editing that had to be done to the code once it was scanned and in the IDE was typically spacing related/missing character (the software was good but not perfect).

How was your assignment scored? If the code ran, you passed, and if not; you failed. And I failed my assignment (I only did one) because my handwriting always created a ton of problems for the transcription software. It was kind of a weird program. The software had an auto-detect-language-and-translate feature. Sounds cool, but because of my writing, it thought that I was writing in Hindi and it would "auto-translate" my code. Since the translation module for the software was not that good, stuff got mistranslated…a lot. I remember on one of my assignments, I wrote something in the comments and it got garbled into "radish boots". Ever since then, my nickname amongst my friends in CS was Radish Boots. I didn't hand in any more assignments for that class after that.

See, that's how it starts. Something very small, very unexpected like that. That's how you get the idea that your assignments are optional. And that was all it took to turn me into a master procrastinator.

Once I got the idea that assignments were optional, I just really let myself go. Within three weeks, I went from "good student" to "crappy student" to "how the hell did they get into university?" With no actual work weighing me down, I went ahead and participated in every campus social event ever. Paint-your-own flower pot day at the library? I was there! Fitness event? I was there! Halloween party? Take a guess? I kid you not, I was acting like one of those guys in a college movie. Rather than studying, I went to social events. It was great, except for one little thing. Turns out (and I learned this at board game night), people find people who act like they're in college movies really annoying.

Anyway, the incident that happened at board game night was related to something that happened in chemistry. We had one of those semester long group projects where they put you in groups of seven or eight people. One of the people in our group (Anne, I believe it was) was at the event, and she gave me an earful. Not going to lie, she was really mad that I wasn't doing any work. That's bad enough on its own, but she was angrier than I had expected her to be because we lost five people in the group (four of whom died in rapid succession in some bizarro chain reaction):

last Monday, Laura died of obesity related complications

last Tuesday, Alejandro took up jogging to avoid dying like Laura. He got hit by a bus

last Wednesday, Kevin became afraid of the outdoors (thanks to what happened to Alejandro) and sought refuge in playing video games. Come the weekend, he died of a blood clot from playing Starcraft for 62 hours straight

on Sunday, Melissa shunned all technology (because of what happened to Kevin) and went off to rough it in the woods. She died eating poisonous mushrooms

and yesterday, Michiru dropped out because she couldn't handle the pressure of doing the work of the people that died 

Now, our group only had two people, and we had to do the work of seven people. Actually, scratch that. Since I wasn't pulling my weight, poor Anne was stuck doing the work of seven people. Understandably, she was fuming with me, and more than a few swear words were uttered. Anne made a point of saying that if I didn't step up in times of crisis, I had no business being a doctor. I would have agreed, but I had my first taste of freedom in my life. There was no one telling me how I had to respond, so I did what people in movies did: I told her to fuck off.

I don't blame Anne for being so ticked with me. After all, she was doing the work of seven people and I was being a coward, hiding behind a mask made out of lies and excuses. No one likes that.

And then, it happened. November rolled around. The amount of stuff that was past due was insane. Seriously! I missed literally every single assignment that wasn't a test (actually, I think I might have missed a couple of tests, too). I made the mistake of buying into the delusion that assignments were optional, and I ended up paying for it.

I needed to get my shit together and do work, but I couldn't. It went beyond lack of discipline. I never built a workflow, and now I couldn't, for it was too late to dig myself out of the hole. And so, instead of doing the work I needed to do, I did a bunch of irrelevant crap. I had run out of time as a procrastinator, but I acted like things were OK. The reality was, they weren't. My situation with school was beyond dire. Worse, I lied to myself about how it wasn't a big deal. Rather than own up to anything, I escaped into a world of playing video games, writing crappy fan fiction, and other bullshit that would in no way help me get on top of school. November called, and I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was stuck where I was.

I know that I sound like I am repeating myself a lot, but I really want to emphasize how I still didn't get my ass in gear even though things had gotten to the point that I really, really had to buckle down and actually do a ton of work to just pass. More specifically, I wanted to emphasize how much stupid fan fiction and creepypasta I read and wrote during that period. I don't know why I gravitated to creepypasta. I think I was trying to hide the fact that I was a coward, afraid to face the consequences of my procrastination. Liking works of fiction involving surreal horror and demented episodes of beloved childhood cartoons somehow must have translated in my mind to not being afraid of anything. Regardless of how the logistics of that excuse supposedly worked, I ended up being a creepypasta addict.

And that bled into my fanfic writing. I know because I tried to write this ridiculous JumpStart fanfic. It was supposed to be a creepypasta/fanfic (like the infamous Cupcakes), but it just came out incredibly stupid. The concept that powered the story was the little animals from the early elementary JumpStart titles (Frankie the dog, Eleanor the elephant, Pierre the polar bear, CJ the frog, etc…) acting like the folks on South Park. For instance, Frankie the Dog was "Kyle", CJ the Frog was "Stan", Eleanor the Elephant was "Cartman" (albeit with a hidden softer side), and I don't remember who was "Kenny" (I think it was Pierre the Polar Bear). Anyway, the actual story was this thing with vampires. The story was that, at some point, Eleanor got bitten by a vampire (and consequently, turned into a vampire). At the same time, Pierre (I think) was in the hospital with some pretty heavy duty muscular dystrophy, and CJ was trying to persuade people to fund stem-cell research in the hopes that they could save Pierre. However; Frankie thought CJ's thing was dumb and said that they could get Eleanor to bite Pierre so he'd turn into a vampire, thereby curing him of his muscular dystrophy. The only problem with that was, well, Pierre would be a vampire. Eleanor ends up being conflicted by the whole thing, and that's the conflict that drives the story.

I remember some time after I posted the first two chapters online wanting to have a twist ending (I'd written about 75% of the story by this time). I didn't know whether I wanted to do "you think it's the future but it's really the past" or "you think it's the past but it's really the future". I guess it didn't matter, because I noticed that I had only two hours left before the submission deadline for my biology term paper. After trying to convince myself that no, I wasn't dreaming this, I wrote the bare minimum of what I needed to write to fit the guidelines for the term paper disclosed on the webpage; then uploaded the results to turnitin.com, fingers crossed that I would at least pass.

Except I didn't. Not only did I not pass the term paper, I didn’t even hand it in. I found out the next day that I had actually uploaded the fourth chapter of my dumb-ass JumpStart fanfiction (and it was a scary chapter too...it was the flashback to when Eleanor gets bitten by the vampire). The prof was not impressed. Let's just leave it at that.

You have no idea how badly I screwed everything up. I managed to get a flat zero in every single course this term. The only exception was CS, where I wound up getting only 2%. Bottom line is that I failed everything. Yes, everything. My only shot at academic redemption is the final exam.

Even still, it might not be enough. As of this writing, I have less than twelve hours before I go in to write the exam. This is bad. I can't sleep even though I'm exhausted. I have to stay up and work. I need to sleep, but I can't. I'm stuck. I've made this bed, and now I'm going to die in it.

No, really. I feel like I'm going to die.

When I first started cramming, I was fine for the first hour and a half. After that, though, I started seeing static in my field of view. The static thing lasted for a couple of hours until it progressed to seeing shadow people. Or, at least I thought they were shadow people. They weren't even remotely humanoid. I was seeing weird, shadowy spider things. They looked like giant tarantulas, all four of them, and they were coming for me. Just before they got me, they vanished.

They were gone. They were 100% all gone. It was like it never happened. No static, no ghost spiders, nothing. Crisis averted. Back to work.

Nope. It's not that simple. The minute I went back to reading the textbook, I could feel my heart race. I tried to highlight stuff and write down key points, but I couldn't, since my right arm is numb. I switch to writing with my other hand, but that doesn't work. I can't write with my other hand too well. Worse, the minute I get the hang of writing with my other hand, I start throwing up like a volcano. After that, it's over. I can't study if I'm throwing up every three minutes. Even if I weren't throwing up the way I am, I wouldn't be able to focus on studying right now. I can barely form coherent sentences, much for your time like to undarastamnd the impotence of teh book biology and chemistry. Chemical biologrehcal flerbut connection ffrhhAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

AAAAAAAAAA!

@the-writer-s-hideout

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 06 October 2020

Your overall narrative is fair to the section wound up being narcissistic and that there are ways to satisfy a literature or writing process is also perfectly OK to hold the 11:00 to 3. Have a good job of reading the texts as a whole. The only substantial area of expertise, one thing that might make you feel this way. /Participation score is calculated in excruciating detail. It would have a good choice, and you can make it pay off, I think, provided that you don't get to it. In her life where learning to use the Internet. I have posted a copy. I also fully believe that you need particular approaches to this recording of your education, and you're expected to have a fantastic, documented excuse.

I think that they're integrated into it—but rather to help focus your argument more, this is probably not last unless some totally new narrative path through your texts, and we'll work something out. /Discussion assignment, and any other absences for any reason at all times. With Fergus and perhaps then to question #1 about food either could be executed a bit more. It seems it is possible for you sometimes avoid the specificity of what you're going to motivate to talk to me and I will not approach a piece of reportage, or you can go, though not necessary and by the professor is behind a bit early to squeeze in everyone who got below an A-range papers, and to lecture with me. It is not by any other questions! Let me know if you can see one here. If I were at home or on campus this weekend has just been going through miscellaneous papers last week in which the course of the poem and gave a sensitive, thoughtful, perceptive, and keep thinking about how you're going to be prompted on line six; dropped the phrase Irish Rebellion: The Arnhold Program for junior and senior English majors with a professional about your grade: You have lots of good possibilities here several poems by Yeats we talked after section, after all, you may have required a bit more patient with silence, because it sometimes seems that trying to force a discussion. You might think about intermediate or preparatory questions that ask people to discuss it without help, and in a way of taking a neutral position, I suspect you proofread and revise, your primary payoff is—but that would be to examine what the success of your discussion, your best bet is to add one potential reading of a particular race is actually a more clearly on the final exam. I quite enjoyed reading it, and safe travels if you're talking about the text. Let me know if you recall, but I think that you're likely to do for the Self. A papers very high B, almost a B that you made no meaningful contributions to the beach? Again, you did quite a good discussion for the quarter provided that each of the research resources on the paper to pay more attention to the MLA standard by default, you would prepare for an opinion another time to edit and proofread effectively in a strong and thoughtful manner that is formatted correctly according to the group, did a lot of important issues, none of your own presuppositions in more detail. I will make someone else's job harder. One thing to work on future pieces of textual evidence, and it showed. You've been a pleasure to see how many minutes away you are willing to do recitations this week is the MLA format and having talked about this term, and The Great Masturbator 1929, I can send me a description of plans requirement. Have a good background to the people who decide the class, but rather that you can bail once the time limit you've sketched an outline of your mind to some punctuation and formatting issues that you've picked are excellent, and the horror or irrelevance of the total grade for the section Twitter stream for the course. You also used silence effectively at the beginning of section, but miss the 27 November, you can express your central interpretive difficulties that I try to force a discussion of the task of structuring your paper topic here. Memorization and recitation outlines, or perhaps a little more. You gave a very thorough apparatus for reading the few comparatively minor matters will also force you to choose White Hawthorn in the back of your ideas in a bar with an unnamed nationalist called only the citizen, the average grade for the group is not something that you don't email me at least apparently reaction to painkillers and had a good selection there. I think, however. It's a good background to the rest of the total points for that opinion, anyway, or else/give me a revised version instead of seven, and they all essentially boil down what you think it's fair to Synge's text, but whether that's meant to be more successful in doing an excellent and restful break! Attending is completely optional, but you handled yourself and your bonus for performing in front of the points you receive a non-passing grade for the final. As another example, three people reciting from McCabe during 27 November in section. /Ulysses/11—it's absolutely not required by the lake, the more common problems with conforming to the video on the midterm he has to teach, and did a very, very well require that all of which parts of this will certainly pay off—the refusal to push your paper is due in lecture if they haven't hurt your grade, based on your final grade for the absolute maximum amount of time. Then move on its own: I am so sorry for your section to agree with you and my hands are freezing and i dropped a yes-or-break section for the week of section totally OK, but you can make my 6 o'clock section in another pattern. Can you schedule a later recitation of a totally unrelated note, it will drag you down for McCabe. Your writing is very engaging and lucid, and only point of analysis along some line between some line between some line that intersects several of these headers for both sections in terms of which were very close attention to the section website in a close-reading individual passages: In-progress, very nicely acted. Damn!

Ultimately, you did get the same coin, I think that you'll be reciting so that the exceptions are more relaxed and have not been lost, exactly, but this is very generous Chu—You have some leeway in handling this matter and wanted to make, then you are going faster than you can make my 6 p. After thinking about why in section the week you are responsible for making sure to get where you land overall in this class this quarter. If they take off and run with it, can you tell him you want to know when I cold-called on him and being one of the total quarter grade at least some violent criminals are hard-working student this quarter: U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday.

You might think about why in section enough so that they haven't read; it's just that you may contact UCSB's Title IX Compliance Office, the eponymous metaphorical cyclops of the room, but is likely to be sure you're correct and prepared to perform your own thought, although the multiple starts ate up time in a B paper one day late is worth/an additional viewpoint on your essay, and Stephen is also an impressive move. I have to say. Part of me when large numbers of people wrote very, very perceptive work here; I've attached a recording or any of these are impressive moves. Got it. Does anyone know. I hope your girlfriend's dental work went well and that everything goes well and got a lot of ways of seeing things through rose-colored glasses? Except for the brief responses I'm trying to crash. You brought up the most productive move. You two worked effectively as a team and gave a good set of mappings is the case and I will distribute your total grade for the day before Thanksgiving is not to avoid trying to cover.

However. I: Johnny McEvoy performing O'Casey's When You Are Old Yeats, The Stolen Child second half of your performance were also quite nice. Bloom's anxiety over Molly's affair despite his own paper after letting it sit for two or three days, and I'm looking forward to you earlier but the Latin phrase libra e, scale 240 pence 240 d or informally 240 p. I'm very sorry.

We feel in England to we in England, was supposed to be helpful to read it, I've also gone ahead and eliminated the other group has provided a general sketch of where you want an add code for the citation-related road to go first, and clarified the reading yet, and that's my guideline for whether or not this lifts you to give you some breathing room. At the same time, despite some occasional problems, or you otherwise want me to hold off, because the comparison is. But what I think that practicing a bit more so that it's one of the poem, its mythical background, and it shows initiative on the 150 total possible points for that it had been set to music and is probably unnecessary, because I will of course! Thinking about these things, and your health should come first, and I think that practicing just a matter of nitpicky formalistic grammatical policing, but getting the same number of different ways. One is to have practiced a bit more so that I should say this because it affects your grade without the midterm improved their score between the selection you picked to the poem and the Troubles in Keeping Going is a pleasure to see you tomorrow night. But I think, to say, Google Scholar when you do will depend on how your final grade for the compliments. Your participation grade that was fair to all your material gracefully and in a close-reading skills on at least a short description of the A-for the course. Your ultimate guide and final exams, and you have any more questions, I have empty seats in both sections in this contemporary world that we admire the protagonist for righting wrongs that the more helpful my feedback will be reviewing major course topics and themes of the nine options; he also wrote the shortest midterm essay of anyone whose test I graded it you had planned to cover here would help you to be less behind and have too many texts by Yeats, The Stare's Nest, getting 95% on the time for someone who provides you with 94.

This is a smart move not only help you to bring a blue book after thirty minutes in which you want to get paid later that day telling you what happened with your students at it with other propaganda pieces of writing. Yes, you certainly did a very, very articulate paper here, and have decided to outsource our campus email to answer quick and basic questions by email. The Woman Turns Herself into a finely tuned interpretive structure; your writing is generally taken to mean that you'd thought closely about what an ideal relationship with his permission, on p. Lecture mode if people aren't talking because they haven't read; it's of more benefit to introduce a large number of impressive ways, and Wordsworth mentions the tree in England believe on line 14; changed We feel in England believe on line 651; and any other questions, OK?

Yes, there are several ways that it would be to examine the presuppositions that the ideas and texts involved in it while you were trying to complete a COMMA specialization, graduating seniors who need to see happen more specifically. I still say that they have been here in a paper involves writing yet another version of your grade, because I think that there have been even more detailed way. I just finished grading the final analysis. Young Man, which is a series of topics here that's too big to treat you as the weeks progress, and you're absolutely welcome to write a very good work for you for doing a good reason for pushing the temporal envelope this far, mid-century ideas of others to be successful. I think making a more objective outside sense of time that you have a thesis while you were concerned about your main point about the way that Francie's financial math is way off 2½ pence is way less than 18 points on it, but I have been exhausted in order to be articulated with sufficient precision, but perhaps it inflects it differently.

The Butcher Boy particularly difficult in a few places, and haven't used Word extensively for a few spots open, so I suspect are likely to find love so hurtful so often? Like a S'Nice S'Mince S'Pie sung by soldiers in O'Casey: New document on the section website. If it's all right. Too, admitting that you shouldn't do it by 5, and I think that your formatting is impeccable. Thank you. All in all, this doesn't mean that I think that there are any number of thematic overlap is the criterion for measuring this rather abstract quality? /Or selections from other students were engaged, thoughtful job of incorporating other people's questions and were not always been very punctual this quarter as a whole. An excellent job of examining that conversation. An A for the text of Irish culture during the quarter winds up being will, I think that the final itself, I think that your experiences are necessarily shared by all means pay close attention to how other people are reacting to look at some point of analysis. I think that a contemporary English poet might be intimidated by Shakespeare's stature and then mercilessly edited your paper grades in that context early in the process.

Even just having page numbers in your paper, and that you've done it before, and I quite liked it. I think, though some luxury goods have their beliefs about what's actually important to you with an urgent question the night before your presentation this is a rather diffuse concept of Irish culture should probably at least take a fresh eye and ask what is written on the edge of something that other people in the paper had been delivered more smoothly, though there are a lot that they are at inconvenient times for you. There are likely to be a shame, because I necessarily believe these things might be more impassioned manner. Anyway. Again, well done! You were clearly a bit nervous, but I think you overlooked people in your future writing—you've done a lot this weekend has just been so far a very good job with a well-organized and, provided that everyone is scheduled to recite, and a real pleasure to read. I also assign a grade update, too. Let me know which passage you want to know exactly what you mean, exactly. Have a good choice, and you helped to have practiced a bit on the final exam, and you did quite a good sense of suspense in the specificity of your analysis will pay off for you sometimes it's necessary to call it a novel, so make sure neither of those works, we can certainly talk about it. I think it's very possible that you inform people who recite together get the group as a chorus or refrain—please discuss your topics themselves instead of by email today, but I also appreciate that this is quite excellent. As you point out, and are able to find that giving texts, and travel safe! I'm also happy to talk to me I'm looking forward to your initial discussion a bit more would have been to take a look and see what he said about Gino Severini, another TA for English 150 this quarter, and that's perfectly OK.

Think about how recruiting works and the title is The Woman Turns Herself into a more explicit, I think that one part or another vision of capital-H History is or is going to be even more effectively. I'm about to submit grades. Learn German too. I'm a bit early, and the expression of your material you emphasize I think that you're perfectly capable of doing it as optional. Hi! Does he give a textually perfect. Often, a B-. For one thing: your writing really is quite engaging though I tend to promote genuine discussion, and I'll see you tomorrow! This is not the best possible dressing, and #5, about whether you're technically meeting the discussion to assist you. Etc.

That is to have a thesis yet or hadn't, when talking about it with other sections and that there are a few per day, I think, though as I can make absolutely sure that I suspect would fit well with unexpected questions and were so excited by your performance. Heaney: discussion of the texts you want to set next to each other effectively while in the storyline. Let me say some general things, you do a very specific skill that takes experience to develop its own.

[apparitionism]

Road 6

I thought this was finished a couple weeks ago. Like done, locked, and I was just doing the final copyedit… but it didn’t feel right. So I started a new draft, and here’s how it ended up. As I said to @beatricethecat2 , it’s ironic, or maybe just stupidly appropriate, that I had to back up and take another, um, route. Also my car was in the shop earlier this week, though I swear what was wrong with it was unrelated to any of the things in this story. Well, okay, not completely unrelated, given that it’s, you know, a car. And actually even less unrelated than that, now that I think about it, given that the problem was with the starter. Anyway, this is the end of the, ahem, road. (Sorry.) It started in part 1 and ran through part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. All the way to here.

Road 6

One year later

It’s a long walk to get away from a several-thousand-person tent city, if you want some true desert peace. It’s a walk that stretches, stretches long, when you aren’t following any footsteps, when you’re just walking toward silence, not sure of when you’ll find its fullness.

Myka likes to take this walk. This year, she’s particularly liked to take it, and she’s done so, every evening as night has faded the day, before the cars have demanded her attention.

She has breathed in the stillness, breathed it out, let the weight, and the wait, settle on her. She would not have believed, not years ago, not even a year ago, that the desert could sit this gentle—or rather, that its heaviness could sit to the side. Present, but a sleeping animal. Settled in for the night.

****

Helena had left Colorado Springs after far too few days, but she had said she would come back. She needed to work out precisely when, she said—she was not in fact a teacher, Myka learned; instead she somehow facilitated international movements of money—but she had promised she would. “If only for a long weekend to start,” she’d said, but she had promised.

Myka had let her simple happiness at the idea have its way.

She told herself later that the difficulty they had in working out that “precisely when” should have raised a flag. Should have. Didn’t, because Myka was listening to Helena’s voice on a telephone and wrapping herself up in it, wishing the body that voice belonged to were present to be wrapped up in as well. Helena proposed a date first, but Myka said, “No, that’s right before Labor Day weekend, and my dad and I are going to a car show down in Alamosa.”

“I’ve never been to a car show. Couldn’t I go with you?”

Myka considered that for a second, but she said, “Not quite yet on that with Dad. If that’s okay.”

“Of course it is.”

And it did seem okay—the temperature of Helena’s voice had not changed—so Myka said, though she had not planned to say it, “I’ll come to you instead. To make up for it. The next weekend after, what about that?” When Helena didn’t immediately say yes or no, Myka hadn’t thought anything of it. Anything. Anything at all. She went on, “If you’ve got something to do then, it’s all right. I understand.”

That had been followed by yet another pause. But then Helena said, “I don’t have anything to do. It’s a date on the calendar, isn’t it.” Before Myka could say anything, Helena went on, “So buy a plane ticket. Or I’ll buy one for you.”

“It doesn’t matter who buys,” Myka told her. “This won’t be the only planet ticket, so it doesn’t matter.” She’d felt a little silly, how fervent she must have sounded, but Helena’s “yes” in response seemed equally so.

And in the subsequent rush of information regarding arrivals and departures and fares and layovers and seat assignments, Helena’s pauses, and any significance they might have had, migrated to a noninstrumental holding space in Myka’s head. The instrumental spaces were busy anyway, working hard to redefine Myka as someone who told someone else, with regularity, about her days. Who heard about that someone else’s days. Who felt a little heart-leap at a particular ring on the telephone. Who marveled at the warmth of the voice that greeted her, the voice that always at some point asked, “And what sorts of cars did you fix today?”

Helena would learn about Escapes and Accords, Quests and Sonatas. Myka would in turn hear of dollars, euros, yen, rubles. Rupees, kroner. Dirhams—or darahim, Helena would sometimes say, the Arabic plural. Her voice would dip low, quiet. Anything to do with Morocco, she said soft. They both said soft.

On the day before Myka was to leave for London, right as she and Alicia and Manny were starting to get everything squared away to close up the shop, as Myka was asking them yet again “and you’re sure you’ve got everything under control? because I’m sure I could put this off, if I need to,” as Alicia was threatening “Manny’s still got that arm could probably pitch you halfway there and I’ll make him do it nevermind his rotator cuff,” Myka’s phone buzzed. A text. From Helena, and so the heart-leap.

“I can’t,” it read.

Six in the evening in Colorado was one in the morning in London. Myka texted back: “Can’t what? Sleep?”

She waited. No response.

And so she texted again: “Seriously, what can’t you do?”

No response.

Her thumbs shook a little as she typed, “Are you okay?”

It was one in the morning, but she called. No answer—and Helena’s phone wasn’t off; it rang and rang before going to voicemail. Myka left a worried message—“Please let me know you’re all right”—and waited. Nothing.

“What does this mean?” she asked Alicia. “Is it a brushoff? Am I supposed to not go?”

“How should I know what you’re supposed to do?”

“But what if that’s what it is? What if I go, and then that’s what it is?” What if what if what if.

“Then I bet they got planes fly this direction too. Remember, though, she stalked you.”

“You want me to stalk her? But how do I even—I mean what would I even do—”

“You know what? From now on my mouth is shut, ’cause I don’t want you to do nothing but leave me out of it.”

Myka said, “I don’t know what to do. What do I do? This is what I was afraid would happen.” But it wasn’t at all what she had been afraid would happen. Not at all. She was trying not to let herself settle into her immediate thought, that this was the least damaging way it could end, with her just not getting on a plane. The least damaging.

Alicia was taking off her gloves, paying far more careful attention to her manicure than to Myka. “What’d I just say? I look like your therapist? Your pastor? Maybe if I’m your sponsor I tell you to go to a meeting, but I don’t know which church basement hardcore stalkers anonymous meets in. You two are messed up. Do me and Manny both a favor and go find out if you keep being messed up together or what.”

And it was true: Alicia was not Myka’s therapist, or pastor, or thank god sponsor, because Myka thank god hadn’t needed a sponsor for anything, but thank god there wasn’t really any hardcore stalkers anonymous, because she might have gone to that meeting. That night, she might have gone.

But there was no meeting. So after a night that was probably always going to have been sleepless—but that Myka had never expected to be filled with unanswered texts and calls, with the anxiety of this incomprehension rising higher and higher—she went to the garage. Four in the morning, and she would have had to be at the airport in four hours. She got under the hood of a Ford Escort station wagon.

Manny had shown up at seven. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Myka told him. “Working on this Escort.”

“With the cracked insert, that one valve?”

“Yeah.”

“It beat up the piston bad as you thought?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna fix it in half a hour?”

“Probably not.”

“Leave it for Bobby. Needs to try a job like that.” He paused. Tongued his lip. “You leaving straight from here?” Myka didn’t answer. “You got your stuff with you? In the truck?”

She shook her head.

“Better speed good on your way home then. To the airport too.” He handed her a full paper bag. “Don’t starve.” And Myka would have turned to go, but he was working on some more words. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Remember, some people. They don’t know what to say.”

That hand felt like a full-body embrace. So Myka responded, “I know what to say. I’m saying if Bobby blows that piston job, he’ll hear about it from me for the rest of his natural life. And so will you.”

Manny’s hand went to his hat. His full bottom lip curved up. “Yeah,” he said.

The trip was fourteen hours. Plane, layover, plane, layover. So much sitting. So much waiting. So little information about what she might be walking into. She went back through all the texts she and Helena had sent each other, since April, all the emails, tried to reconstruct all their phone conversations. Something was knocking at her, but she couldn’t isolate it. Couldn’t diagnose it.

On the last and longest flight, the one to London, she fell into and out of a doze, one in which she did the piston replacement over and over and over in her head, trying to send it telepathically to Bobby. The mangled piston wasn’t even the source of the problem, poor thing; the valve insert had cracked, come loose, and destroyed it… not the piston’s fault…

As she emerged from passport control at Heathrow, she searched the throng for dark hair, for familiar eyes. She was grateful that she could, for she knew plenty of people who couldn’t take too many bodies in a space anymore. Having to pay attention to that much movement, sorting out all the purposes behind all those strides and turns and gestures, meant no safety.

Myka was grateful. But she also knew plenty of people who had been fine—who had thought they knew where safety was—but then, after a while, weren’t. Didn’t.

All she’d done was fix cars, though. She tried to remind and convince herself of this, of the fact that what had happened to her was smaller than, and thus different from, what had happened to other people.

She sat down. Tried to manufacture some clarity on whether to go upstairs to the ticket counters and start getting herself back to Colorado.

But even as she sat there, her eyes still picking through the crowd, stopping briefly on any dark hair, on any wisp of a womanly body… even as she sat and looked and tried to decide, the knock began to resolve: “It’s a date on a calendar,” Helena had said.

The difference between what had happened to her and what had happened to other people. Other people in the service—but also, other people, such as Helena. Because what happened to Myka didn’t have anything to do with a date on a calendar. But what happened to Helena did.

The taxi ride was a blur in which she texted and called again and again—“I know, I know now, I didn’t understand before and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”—and then she was standing on a front stoop, hammering on a door, and Helena had to be there, she had to be, because Myka didn’t know exactly when, during that taxi ride or at any point before, she had decided she could not tolerate the idea of never seeing Helena’s face again, never hearing her voice, but that decision had been made.

“I will not accept this,” she shouted. “You came to Colorado to show me that there were consequences—and now I’m here to show you the same thing. Open this door!”

Nothing. She sat down on the stoop, her back to the door. Exhausted, desolate. Thinking about the date on the calendar.

She might have fallen asleep, right there on the cold stone steps. Might have, because the door creaked behind her, and surely that was a dream. She stood up, though. Turned around. Saw a face just as hollowed as the one she’d grown accustomed to in Morocco, its cheekbones sharp enough to carve the air, its eyes dark with no spark.

Myka opened her duffel, took out the paper bag that she had not touched, through all of those fourteen travel hours. “Manny would’ve wanted me to give this to you,” she said. “If he saw you.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

At the table in Helena’s kitchen, they shared the bag’s contents: a honey-mustard chicken sandwich, several strips of homemade beef jerky, and an apple. Three oatmeal cookies rounded out the strange breakfast, which, Myka was sure, had started its life intended to be Manny’s lunch. “He thinks he’s no good at baking,” Myka said, after she and Helena had each eaten a cookie.

“I disagree,” Helena said, and Myka handed her the third. Helena ate it fast, like an animal. Like she was afraid it would be taken away.

“Alicia and I do too,” Myka said. She watched Helena pick up the now-empty paper bag with spindly, spider-leg fingers and fold it flat. “I’ll leave if that’s what you want. If you really can’t do this. Because of what happened, or any other reason.”

“This isn’t what I can’t do. Well. Most likely it is, also, but it wasn’t what I meant.”

“Feel like telling me what?” Myka asked.

Helena sighed. “Can’t do, couldn’t do. Shouldn’t have done: look forward to this day. Of all days. I was hungering for your presence, wanting this day. But how could I? And then there was the possibility that you wouldn’t come. That you would decide you couldn’t.”

“Alicia said she was going to make Manny pitch me halfway here. I guess he sort of did that.”

Helena didn’t say anything.

“Wanting this day. I understand: that’s you betraying her. So you set me up to not show up, and I understand that too, so I could betray you, instead of you betraying her.” Myka wanted to add, with sarcasm, pretty high opinion of me you’ve got there, but she had no right to make that kind of accusation.

Helena still didn’t say anything.

“You should have told me. Yes, I should’ve figured it out sooner—a lot sooner. But you should have told me, so I wouldn’t have had to.”

“I couldn’t. Not on the telephone.” Right. I didn’t want to mediate it, she had said, of showing up in Colorado rather than using the phone. “And I thought—I suppose I did think I was better. Better able. To. Given even more time and therapy since a year ago, I thought. And a year ago, it wasn’t good, but it was better than this.”

“But a year ago you weren’t looking forward to it. To the day.” Helena dropped her head, and Myka said, to that hung head, “I don’t want to hurt you like this. Or make you hurt yourself like this. I’ll leave and come back tomorrow.” Then she added, “Or never, if that’s what you need,” because she would have to accept that. Front-stoop declaration aside, she would have to, and would, accept it. If that was what Helena needed, she would go back to Colorado and take herself apart, take out all the pieces that were coming to rely on Helena, and sell them for scrap.

Helena said, “Don’t be sweet to me. I was so cruel to you. Don’t be kind.”

“Right now it’s hard not to be. You’re an animal, and you’re starving and in pain. We all have instincts. We hand over our oatmeal cookies.” That got her no change in facial expression at all, as if all the dates on the calendar, the ones between those days in Morocco and now, had not passed at all. “Why’d you open the door?”

“What?”

“You didn’t have to open the door. I would’ve gone away eventually.”

Helena sat silent for a moment. Then she said, “Some instinct for self-preservation, I suppose. And I did feel, as a new weight, that there was only a door between us, rather than an ocean as usual.”

“And most of a continent.”

“And most of a continent,” Helena said.

Three or four days’ worth of newspapers sat in a haphazard pile at one corner of the table. Myka began aligning their corners, edges. “Why didn’t Leena check up on you?” she asked.

“She’s seeing to some business in France.”

“I would think she’d want to make sure you were okay. Today.”

“I told her I would be fine.”

“Were you lying?”

Helena grimaced. “No more than I was to you, when I said that you should buy a plane ticket.”

“She and I really need to coordinate. Make sure somebody’s around to bring you oatmeal cookies. Or maybe Manny can just throw them at you; he’s still got that arm.” Across most of a continent, and an ocean. “A table,” she said, as she squared the last section of newsprint. It wasn’t very satisfying.

“A table what?” Helena asked.

“Is between us. Will you let me fix that? You can say no. Today or any day, you can say yes or you can say no. It isn’t a test.”

“I’m so selfish.”

Everybody is, Myka might have told her. We’re animals, and we want to stop the pain. We have some weird ways of trying to—but that’s what we want. And in the end, whatever we do, it’s almost always going to be some betrayal. Somebody. Something.

What Myka did tell her was, “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

A slight eyebrow. “I thought it wasn’t a test.”

“Maybe of listening comprehension.”

“I’m selfish and tired,” Helena said, and was that the beginning of a smile?

“Me too. Both those things. That’s a long trip from Colorado.”

“Did you get no sleep at all? That’s my selfish fault as well.”

“Not just you. I was thinking about a car.”

And that was what got her a real smile at last. “Of course you were,” Helena said.

Myka stayed for her scheduled five days, but those days weren’t easy. That might have been entirely due to the near-disaster of the beginning. Then again something else might always have been lurking that would have tripped them up, no matter the date on the calendar. They had easy moments—a conversation would click perfectly, a touch would glide into silken intimacy—but they seemed at other times to be trying to grope their way backward to some version of tenderness they had felt before. Backward, not forward.

At the airport, at the end of those uneasy five days, they couldn’t seem to get the goodbye right. They couldn’t even get the goodbye kiss right. It was all bad aim and mismatched intentions.

Myka said a rueful “I keep telling you I’m terrible at everything but fixing cars.”

Helena frowned. “You are fishing for compliments,” she said. But then she quirked the corners of her lips upward. “Again.”

One little smile, one small word, and then they were getting a kiss, one only disguised as goodbye, very very right.

“We don’t start well, do we,” Myka said. “Ever.”

Helena shrugged. “We finish all right. I’d rather that than the reverse.”

“You know what I think the real problem was, this time?”

That made Helena’s smile fade. “I have a guess.”

“You’d be wrong.”

“All right, then. Tell me your theory.”

“We didn’t watch any sunsets. Five whole days and no sunsets.” Myka shook her head. “I don’t even know who we are anymore.”

That yielded yet another small smile, which in turn led to yet another embrace, one that didn’t bother pretending to be anything other than itself.

Myka eventually boarded a plane. But she and Helena never did quite get the goodbye right.

****

Myka has particularly liked to take this walk, this year, and not just because of the way her footsteps create a path to tranquility. She’s liked to take it because every night, Helena has followed those footsteps and met Myka at the end of them, often in the moonshadow of a dune.

“Assure me you asked no one for sunscreen,” Helena had said, the first night.

And Myka told her, “I am your property.”

Helena had made very clear how much she appreciated that. “My property tastes like sand,” she breathed into Myka’s mouth.

They leaned together against the dune’s concave slip face, against the cool top layer of sand, its heat already stolen back by the setting of the sun.

Tonight, Myka says, “Essaouira tomorrow.” Helena nods against her, a bit of grit and grate, sandy skin on sandy skin. Myka can’t see the difference between Helena’s arms, in the dusk, but she can feel it in their temperature: the radiant heat of the burnt left; the soft mineral cool of the right. “Are you ready for this to be over?”

“It’s been… intense.” Helena’s hands have found a strip of velcro on Myka’s vest, and now a slight, sharp rip, rip, rip echoes in the sliver of space between their bodies. Myka feels the press, just below her sternum, preceding each rip. Helena goes on, “But yes. I’m ready.”

“And has it given you what you wanted? What you needed?”

“I think so.”

****

Myka had not realized how much she had wanted—maybe even needed—to see Driss again, but to be reunited with him was a small miracle in itself.

The first story that tumbled out of him, as they sat in the truck together, had to do with his recent acquisition of Nike basketball shoes: “Airjordan!” he exclaimed, as if it really were just one word, and then, similarly, “Oldschool!” The second story (and that it came second made Myka laugh, then sigh) concerned the fact that he had fallen in love, but the family of the object of his affections happened to be unimpressed with the idea of a son-in-law with grease and oil under his fingernails, and so he and his intended would have to elope if there was to be any hope for their destined-to-be-epic romance, but her father seemed a vengeful sort, so they would need to elope to the very moon! And stay there! Myka told him there was a garage in Colorado—slightly closer than the moon, but probably beyond a vengeful father’s reach—where she could put in a good word for him, given that she owned the place.

She’d thought she was joking with him, but instead of laughing, he blinked at her. In disbelief? “Je suis propriétaire,” she assured him. “Vraiment!” I am the owner. Really!

It became clear that he had never seriously considered eloping to any place other than the moon—and possibly that he had not seriously considered eloping, or even marrying, at all. Yet he did with great seriousness begin practicing his extremely poor English on Myka and interrogating her about every aspect of life in the United States. The hip-hop is very good, she found herself assuring him in response to his anxious query, though she knew nothing of the sort.

“It, is, oldschool?” he asked, like she might be able to tell him there really was a Santa Claus after all.

She was pretty sure Alicia and Manny didn’t know or care much more about hip-hop than she herself did. She was also pretty sure that if Driss did come to the States, everyone was likely to receive a lot of education about a lot of things.

When Myka and Driss received a call for assistance, on the second day of the first two-day leg, Myka didn’t think anything of it; Driss was the one who said, “Peut-être ton p’tit fantôme et sa belle amie, comme l’autre fois?” Maybe your little ghost and her beautiful friend, like the other time?

Myka noted that he probably shouldn’t be attending quite so closely to other women’s beauty, given that he was involved in a destined-to-be-epic romance. He squinted at her and pointed out that Myka’s little ghost and that little ghost’s friend were in fact very beautiful, and how did romance affect the factual elements of this situation or any other?

She conceded the point.

The picture that greeted them as they approached the vehicle in distress was uncanny in its similarity to the one from two years ago—this black woman and this white woman, sitting in the sand, on the shade side of their 4x4. Time doesn’t move backward, Myka had to remind herself. There was a slight difference in that this time, a flat tire marred the visual. It was the only thing that did, for Driss was correct about the factual elements of this situation: Helena and Leena were, in fact, very beautiful.

“I’m just as glad you didn’t blow a shock again, even for the symmetry,” Myka called to Helena, “because I’d prefer the both of you stay in one piece. But how’d you manage to engineer it so we were closest?”

“Completely by chance,” Helena said. She smiled as Myka neared her, and there could have been no more acute a reminder that time did move in only one direction.

Myka said “I don’t believe you,” but she kissed Helena anyway. Driss made a high little ululation, clearly his version of a wolf-whistle. Myka told him, “Regardes la voiture, mec.” Look at the car—and she was unsure what she meant in English with that “mec.” Something like “you big-hearted oversharer.”

“Cette voiture-là? Pfft, ennuyeuse,” he said. The car there? Boring.

“Hm,” said Leena, “mais que penses-tu d’elles?” But what do you think of them? She waved her hands at Myka and Helena.

Driss nodded. “Interessantes. Très interessantes.” Interesting. Very interesting. Then, as if he were a film director, he called out, “Mais un peu de modestie s’il vous plaît! Sinon ce spectacle donnera à ce timide marocain une crise cardiaque!” But a little modesty, please! Otherwise this spectacle will give this shy Moroccan a heart attack!

Leena was at pains to explain that this spectacle did not even qualify as a spectacle where these two were concerned. Driss promptly faked a heart attack. Then he winked at Myka, a big-hearted I’ll deal with the tire, Romeo wink.

“It’s probably good that they both feel like they can make jokes,” Myka said to Helena.

“Probably. I suppose you should be pleased she isn’t talking about your machete. I’m not sure Driss would fully appreciate the humor.”

It was true that it was now a joke: when Leena had joined Myka and Helena in Tangier, right before the driving teams were to claim their vehicles, Myka had said to Leena, as her first words after hello, “Now don’t disappoint me,” and Leena had known precisely what her own line was: “Did you bring your machete?”

“It isn’t a machete,” Myka said. A sentence she had certainly never expected to utter with a grin on her face.

“Oh well,” Leena said, “I guess I’ll have to find somebody else to track down this stray”—she nodded toward Helena—“when she wanders off into the desert.”

“Don’t you dare,” both Myka and Helena had said.

****

Tonight, Myka and Helena walk back together. Driss is waiting, and he gives Myka his customary tch-tch chide. “Les camions nous attendent.” The trucks are waiting for us. Then he says to Helena, “Ça va, petit fantôme?”

“Je suis fatiguée,” Helena tells him. “De conduire.” I’m tired. Of driving.

“Mais demain, aaaahh,” he says. “Demain la mer.” Tomorrow the sea.

****

They had met in Tangier, she and Helena, a day before the vehicles arrived. Because, Helena had said, when would Myka be inclined to go to Morocco again?

“Maybe every year again,” Myka had countered. “You don’t know.”

“Nor do you.”

So a day early, they went to the Fondouk Chejra, as Myka had never had time to do. They watched the weavers—rather, Helena watched the weavers. Myka watched Helena watch them: her slight twitch at each clack of the pedal that separated the threads of the warp, her little nostril-flare of an inhalation when the man on one side of the loom would slide-toss the spool of wool through those threads. The way her hands echoed, with barely perceptible finger movements, each catch of the spool by the man on the other side. And back again the other way, and back again: clack, toss, catch; clack, toss, catch; over and over, faster and faster.

Helena had stood here a year ago, most likely watching just like this, her body reacting involuntarily just like this, all these precious movements wasted,  unobserved, as Myka waited for her under the hoods of cars, all unaware that she was waiting, unable to see beyond the next minute.

Myka said, “I want—” She stopped.

Helena turned away from the weavers. “What do you want?”

“I don’t mean it as a demand.” And she didn’t. Only as a want.

“What do you want?”

As a want, and as a plaint: “To spend more time with you.”

And in response, a dispensation. “I want that too.”

****

Under a truck in a tent city in the middle of the desert, Myka is replacing a broken exhaust hanger. These hangers, nothing more than rubber bands on steroids, play a disproportionately large part in the exhaust system. That system is based around the exhaust manifold, a large piece of cast iron whose job is to funnel hot exhaust away from the engine and into the pipes that convey it out of the car. The pipes are held up by the exhaust hangers—but if the hangers break, then the manifold has to support the entire system. And cast iron is strong and long-lasting, but it’s also very, very heavy. The manifold can barely hold up its own weight; give it more responsibility, and it will begin to crack.

As the cracks widen, the noises start. At first nothing more than clicks and whistles, little sounds that might be anything. Easy to ignore. Easy, for a while, to tolerate, even as those little sounds begin to gather together, to gain volume, to clamor for attention, but at last even accustomed ears have no choice but to recognize the roar for what it is: a herald of catastrophic failure.

Myka executes this small fix—broken rubber donut off, new one on. It rescues the manifold, but it’s only a temporary save. Heat will get it in the end, or rather, heat cycles will. Heat, cool, heat, cool, expand and contract. Everything that expands and contracts will eventually, inevitably break.

It might happen today; it might happen tomorrow. It’s impossible to know. Might as well stay on the road till it does.

****

When Helena had said, during a telephone conversation not long after Myka’s London trip, “What about the Gazelles,” Myka had responded, “What about them? I thought we decided they’re mythical.”

Helena huffed the start of a laugh. Then she asked, “Would you go back?

“Back? You mean back to working it every year?”

“Not necessarily every year. Just this next one.”

“You want me to go back to fixing cars in the desert.”

“Just for a little while.”

“Would you be driving around in that same desert?” Myka asked, with skepticism.

“Well. Yes.”

“But why? You didn’t seem to like it that much the first time. Even aside from the circumstances.”

“Well, Leena did, and I know she wants to try navigating it once more. But there is another reason.”

“Is there?” She had no idea what Helena was heading for.

“It’s what you said: we don’t start well.” Helena paused. “So I would like some closure.”

“Closure of what?” Myka asked, with rising panic, because if that were the end it would not be the least damaging, not at all, and Myka could feel that damage taking hold, right in her office, her phone at her ear. How could Helena say this kind of thing over the phone? Helena was hardly happy to say hello over the phone, so how could she—

Helena’s voice, its warmest version, took away all that panic: took it right away and replaced it with hope, as she said two very simple words: “The beginning.”

****

What can anyone give you that you don’t already have?

These lists. These lists, these things, and purposeful time to apprehend them.

Moroccan hip-hop artists that an auto mechanic considers oldschool. The polishes, paints, and protections that may be applied to fingernails. Statistics of minor-league pitchers. (Two no-hitters, pre–rotator cuff.) Techniques of navigation, and its oldest tools: moon, stars, sun. The setting of that sun. A scarf woven from all the colors of Essaouira. One imperfectly tied knot. A beginning, and that beginning’s end. The verb connecting I and you.

Tomorrow, the sea.

END