Glass World

Skipping rocks is one of Craig's favorite pastimes. Few other activities strike so perfect a balance of effort to reward for him. Cracking peanuts is another one. Simple things. He shied away from more convoluted effort-reward systems that leave too much room for complication and variability. The worst that can come of his rock skipping is a pulled shoulder, and the best is when the stone concludes a series of stochastic skips with a gratifying bout of hydroplaning. He saw the movie "Amelie" during his unremarkably awkward transition into adulthood. Having been conditioned to find women frightening, mysterious, and intimidating, it baffled him to behold a woman who he considered a sexual being and yet was so dedicated to rock skipping. He was by no means sexist; he did not believe that anybody enjoyed skipping rocks beyond adolescence. Everybody he knew participated primarily in productive activities that lead to a stronger Earthly presence and a greater sense of their identity. Sports, politics, art, yoga, drinking. Craig built a considerable sense of self by these means, but knew he was neglecting something inside of him that was weakening, and it made him both yearn for connection but reluctant to let anybody get close.

Years passed and Craig moved to the city and entered the corporate domain where his dreams were scrapped for sustenance and his childhood appeared in marketing, graffiti, t-shirts, social networking sites, and everywhere else that wasn't inside of him. His job restricted the internet access for employees, in fact the only web site not surf blocked was Google maps, so they could give customers directions to their offices. During down time he would zoom in on specific neighborhoods in the city and look at the business names and memorize the reviews. He was hoping to find somewhere to go and connect with people. Maybe even connect with... someone. One day he found a small blue blob in his searches. He zoomed in as close as he could and the name popped up. Chelsea's Pond. He tried to imagine the ambiance of a pond in this city. Then he thought about skipping rocks. The last time he skipped rocks was long before he moved into this city, and he does not know why he stopped aside from being busy. What was he doing this weekend? He had planned on seeing live music and talking to strangers about it afterwards in vague emotional terms. Then he remembered "Amelie". This seemed like the sort of pond her character may frequent since it is on the outskirts of downtown and, assuming the lack of obstructions, would thus offer an impressive panoramic view. Over the remainder of the week, the possibility of meeting Amelie at Chelsea's Pond moved slowly from a fanciful thought to an assumed inevitability for which he ought to prepare.

Come that Saturday, he cleaned his house, stocked his kitchen with local produce and quirky snack foods that may be shared on his stoop during bouts of people watching, did his laundry, and that afternoon hopped on his bike and headed to Chelsea's Pond. Here are his thoughts during this journey.

"She will be just like me: no direction or future plans, a very existential lifestyle conscious only of the temporary, completely unaware of even the moments to follow. Given our lack of purpose apart from stone skipping, we will find direction together and nothing will ever be the same. Or wait, am I this looming oppressive mass encroaching upon her free will? No doubt her loneliness could have driven her to the same hue of near madness that I experience; perhaps we will be exploiting each others weaknesses, two vines using one another for support to aimlessly climb only to choke one another and, without guidance, never find sunlight. Woah. No, it won't be like that, it will be esoteric conversations at cafes. It will be blankets strewn with dream journals, dvd cases, and condom wrappers. For once it won't be sadly revisited when I'm cleaning my room months later to find bobby pins on bureaus, in-jokes and incomplete verse scrawled across torn pages and crusty plates under the bed. When I see her at the pond I will abruptly start making dryly humorous observations until something happens. I'm not too old to do that, right? It's not creepy when I do that yet, is it? What sort of observations can be made about a pond? Oh god have I created a self-serving fantasy? Am I sabotaging myself by creating a standard of perfect imperfection that no real person could live up to? I need to have reasonable expectations. She will probably be one of those totally obnoxious scene girls with a hideous floral print dress that matches my couch and cowboy boots even though she's from Long Island, and I need to be fine with that."

Craig arrived to find a legion of other bicycles chained to freshly painted racks. The trees and shrubbery were plentiful and clearly under control, arranged with no small amount of symmetry. It would have felt like walking through a sterile dentist office painting if it weren't for the homeless people fucking in the clusters of shrubbery. He was delighted to see no shortage of young attractive strangers conversing at the shore of the pond. While searching for stones, he felt not the least bit self-conscious but rather like he was doing something as routine as public transit. In fact he was surrounded by people who were kicking the soil in search of something, though he found it odd that there were no rocks to be skipped. A man about Craig's age dressed sharply with a German sense of efficiency approaches and says, "Isn't this great? Are you here for Amelie, too?" Craig was so shocked that he responded in exactly the manner that would make him seem not at all shocked, "Where are all the stones?" "They've all been skipped man, you got here late!" The man laughed and walked off, and as Craig turned to look at the pond two women appeared next to him and talked loudly about how neither of them remembered that pond being there before. Craig caught this obvious invitation and agreed with them, at which point the more remote girl dispersed into the crowd, leaving Craig alone with Ursula. Craig says she is the first Ursula he has ever met, and she replies "Do you like sex?" Craig confirmed that he did, then tried to add some appropriate irony which she interrupted with, "Do you like 'Amelie'?" Craig said yes, but before he could elaborate she says, "Good! Let's go over there." She motions with her eyes towards a nearby patch of shrubbery and trees. Craig realizes that those weren't homeless people he heard fucking in the bushes a few minutes prior. They start to walk, but Craig stops and asks, "But don't you want to know why we're here? Where did all of this come from?" Ursula replies, "What difference would it make?" Craig's mind reluctantly follows his body into the bushes, the way it always does.