Joy is...

...this:

It's heaven, I tell you. :D :D

There are ways and means in which you can extract maximum happiness from a little egg-shaped, chocolate- and surprise-filled ...thing.

Here are the steps:

1. Enjoy splitting egg-container. :D

2. Enjoy taking out spoon thing.

3. Enjoy eating the little ferrero rochers and the chocolate. Eat quickly, this gives you a nice little sugar rush. :D

4. Read the instructions.

5.* Enjoy assembling teeny-tiny toy.

6.* Enjoy watching teeny-tiny toy working.

*Note: for maximum enjoyment, ensure no wet blanket types are around while executing these steps, to say, 'Exactly how old are you, again?' and other demotivating things.

Joy.

Katze

How to Read a Book

Let's see.

I used to think I had no clue, and yet, as I trawl the internet for the 'right' way, I realise no one else does, either. In fact, most people have even less of a clue than I do.

At least, after years and years of reading, I've figured out how to pick books I might want to read, and then actually get down to reading them. I don't need a blog somewhere on the shores of the vast ocean that is the web telling me to find a nice, quiet place. I can read pretty much anywhere, but certain times and weathers inspire me more than others. Like late at night, with nothing else to do, or during the rains, when the weather is special and amazing and cool. I know what kind of books I can read(well-written ones) and which ones I shouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.(It's taken me precious reading time and money to identify those, anyway)

But the real question is, how does one get the most out of a really good book? I rarely ever think about what I'm reading while I'm reading it, and I'm sure this isn't correct. One should, in theory, immerse oneself, and yet be able to talk about it later.

Right?

I tried to read Tolstoy, experimentally, while thinking about and appreciating word usage, characterization and the like. And found myself here, in the present, instead of turn-of-the-century Russia, going to war against Napoleon Bonaparte. More importantly, Andrushka, my longtime fictional crush, stopped being a real person and became just another character fleshed out on paper. I felt like crying.

*sniff*

I give up. Now, unless someone makes me read a book in that way again, I never will. It shatters the soul, really. And ruins all the books that made my life worth living.

Then, I tried to read The Lord of the Flies while thinking about what was happening every chapter or so. I was safe from disconnection, since I thought about everyone, Piggy and Ralph and Jack, as real people, stuck on an island somewhere. But here, while I loathed Piggy initially, I started becoming as scared of the other boys as he was, eventually. And what happened in the end created an emotion in me, a deep root of self-hatred for a race that could become like this in practically no time at all, with no self-control and no ultimate feeling of responsibility when they are away from the eyes of civilization. And that terrified me, too.

So I stick, for the time being, to reading books like I always have, dissolving into nothingness for a while, and coming back with only the vague impression that I have witnessed, not been a part of, something great.

It's safer that way.

Katze

Fic # 3:Secret

For Archu, with no dialogue.(Oh, however will I make the characters and setting believable to my readers??)

Title: Secret
Word count: 506
Genre: No clue :P

****

This big secret. I take it with me wherever I go, and it weighs on my mind.

Life's suddenly become too exciting. All the frustrated wishes that things would change, become better, wilder, have vanished, and all I want right now is for things to go back to normal. To be a nobody, with nothing and no one's attention.

But I should start at the beginning. I have a friend; don't ask me who it is, don't think it's about you, or you, or you in the back there. So this friend of mine, she begins to go slightly crazy. Nothing anyone will notice, of course, but ever so slightly. Things which are unimportant happen, and she's freaked out by them. I, being a half-decent friend, as I like to believe I am, am concerned, then worried. I try to speak to her, and she asks me to leave it alone.

I don't listen. I don't want to.

So then I do what everyone else does, which is poke my nose into her business. I sneakily read her texts, watch her ever so carefully as she walks to and from her apartment, and just generally do things that eventually warrant a restraining order.

I find?

...Nothing, of course. Everything is completely normal. And then(I'm assuming) she finds out about me, because she freaks out even more one evening, as we're sitting in her kitchen and talking about life. So I ask her point-blank, what it is she is so terrified of.

And she won't tell me, but I ask again and again, and it's too late, and we're too high on lack of sleep, and she tells me things. Things I don't want to hear, things I've never wanted to listen to. But now that I have, can I simply go back to the way things were?

The short answer is no.

I want to help, though. I'm unsure about a lot of things, but I know for certain that I want to help her. This burden that she's carried, it seems to have eased simply by the telling, and I wonder if it would ease even more if I try to actively help.

So I try. I follow her around more, and she becomes tired of telling me to go away, go home and leave her to her task. I am always with her, on her side, sometimes the only one. I tell her she is important(not only to the world but to me), and as the weeks pass I realize this has become the truth. She has become irreplaceable and precious and important.

And when she falls, my important, precious, irreplaceable person, I go slightly crazy. Ever so slightly, nothing anyone will notice.

This is the burden I carry, the secret I have shared with no one but her. Her life's work is now mine and I will(must) do anything to achieve its completion. I wish none of this had happened, I wish I hadn't been so curious and so thoughtless, enough to throw my life away.

What choice did I have, though?

It was love.

****

I'm still not sure what that was.

Katze