Nicole

Here goes my first attempt at daily writing, and the first time I have written anything in a very very very very ungodly long time.

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((In one of the sessions I attended at this conference, I was stuck waiting in a room for 30 minutes, and ended up watching this lady, whose name tag said Nicole, interact with several women around her. This is a not-too-exaggerated portrayal of her.))

Contours and lines seemed to be converging in a giant mess of fluid motion. Nothing here remains straight or solid for long that doesn't eventually spin out of control. I trace these lines with my eyes. I take in the colors, the shapes, but come always, irrevocably, back to the lines. In math they tell you that every line is eternal. Any line you see is merely a segment. As I watch this tangled arrangement of lines which swirl, duck, spin, and flirt with each other, it helps to think that they may be thin pieces of forever, in various shades of amber and gold. They are fragile, despite it all. Each line appears to be held, suspended, at the very cusp of a moment, the edge of a possibility. If I think about it too long, I get anxious, wanting the lines to finish their spiral down, down, down, and keep on going. I have a strong aversion to the pause I discover them in. I'm impatient. The streaks, the stripes, they converge and twine around each other, creating a silhouette of chaotic feminine beauty. A curl here, a spiral there, they all align, somehow, to frame her face. When she turns, and the twining mass is tossed, nonchalantly, I see her face, the main act. She has creases enough to be thirty, but beauty enough to be seventeen. Her smile is hesitant, and her lightly hooded eyes seem to retain a sorrow - not an obsessive one, but something that tugs at her from somewhere. When she laughs, it feels as though she's holding back, and while her lightly drifting curls shake against her face with all the energy of a coiled spring, her weak expressions and faltering voice contradict her own incarnation. Everything about her seemed aimed to make her disappear, except her hair. Her face was pale. Her lips small and shell-pink. Her eyes a nondescript blue, beneath pale lids below pale brows. Her hair, however, a flaming golden amber, stood out. Despite the inherent destiny of being born with an explosion of hair, it was as if she intended to live her life without making any impact. She was trying to slip away. And now, I have refused to let her.