Melvin the Artist and Laura the Exquisite Mind

Melvin is a handsome graphics designer with a passion towards plants. He has blue eyes, and likes the color Orange. Actually he never calls it Orange and gets confused when people ask him what his favorite color is. That always reminds him of a friend of his who actually gets upset when people ask him what’s his favorite song or meal, because there really isn’t any.

Melvin noticed that people are put off with the fact that he struggles to answer such a simple question. So one day he decides to change his answer. He felt he had to because he had to take the chance, try something different for this very special person to him who was asking him what his favorite color is.

She was Laura, also an eager graphics designer who likes nature. She enjoys Melvin’s art, and got to know him when he approached her as he found her spending more time looking at his work in an exhibition held within the university they both attend. He was flattered that she consistently glanced at other’s work, but contemplated his work, without her knowing him, or even meeting him before, or even noticing that the creator of the art is standing in a distance, watching her enjoying his art. He had a strong feeling towards this beautiful girl who is obviously interested in his art. He hoped she would become interested in him too, as he does not have a girlfriend and with a date on his mind, he starts walking hesitantly but then more confidently towards here.

He stands next her looking at one of the paintings with a slight smile of admiration on his face. She had similar satisfaction on her face but the difference was that he was admiring her beauty and she was admiring his art.

It takes him one lengthy moment before he looks at her and says, do you like this painting? I think I do. Her white, perfectly aligned teeth show on a smile of hers as she responds positively. She expresses her wonder of the mind behind such a painting, she says passionately. “I mean what goes on inside one’s mind to produce such beauty must be magnificent.” Her question and remark interests him and entices him to ask a much more sophisticated question next. So he asks: “How would you go about exploring an artist’s mind?” He asks her trying not to show that he is the artist behind it but she immediately guesses and asks him whether he is actually the one behind this piece!

He is surprised and feels that he lost the opportunity to freely explore her mind through a neutral conversation about the piece. Now that she knows it is his, the conversation can’t be neutral as people objectivity, free thought are greatly affected by social norms and considerations. He is very impressed by her guess though and starts to wonder what’s beyond that’s silky dark brown hair of hers.

And that was how they started the conversation in which she asks him about his favorite color. He tries to hide the sadness in his face because of this question, and tries to quickly find an alternative to what he usually does, which is just get confused, when he is asked such a question. So he responds: “it’s my little sister”. The answer shocks her a bit. He looks at her wondering eyes kindly and respectfully, then gently turns his back and leaves. As bright a girl as she is, she sees the sadness and wonders when they’ll meet again.

Mailman Jack 2

Jack falls into a short but overwhelming trance. He knows that if it weren't for the fact that he is actually sitting in the office where he works, the trance would have been, if not longer, more intense. The existence of other people, or the potential thereof, keeps him alert. He is conscious that his thought is fading into the background of memory just like the image in front of him as he processes less and less of reality, and more of a memory of a drunken man, wearing a black leather jacket, named Ronald in Jack’s head.

Ronald is not the man’s real name, but the name of the bar the man was standing in front of when Jack was passing by him. The man was probably kicked out of Ronald’s Bar, Jack thought to himself. Ronald, as Jack calls him, had some redness on one side of his face as if he has received a weak punch, probably from a girl he harassed inside, Jack thoughts continue. He dismisses the girly punch quickly as too much speculation, unfair speculation.

But Ronald is obviously not a saint. Jack was made nervous while he was passing by the bar in front of which Ronald was angrily murmuring things to himself. As a consequence, or at least a consequence is what Jack convinces himself it is, he gives Ronald an overly nervous stare, to which the drunken man angrily responds.

The man swears at jack and tries to swing a punch at him but misses and falls on the floor, just like the typical angry drunkard. But jack is an objective person and despite the extent to which having someone try to hit you is personal, he thinks of the incident in abstract terms; he tries to think of it in logical terms. Jack blames himself because he likes to think that he is in control of every situation. He realizes that this is not really true when it comes to dealing with the chaos of this world, especially people. But he convinces himself that had he controlled his reaction and only glanced at the drunken man in a non-offensive manner, or didn't look at all, he would have avoided the whole encounter, and this recall of memory would not have included Ronald, but probably someone or something else that holds more beauty.

His own reflection that he is captured day-dreaming of past experiences, starts to increase his alertness and readiness to come back to the real world from this trance he is having and possibly enjoying. His thought continues just before he gets back to Sally who is actually calling is name with worry about the unresponsive man sitting on the desk next to her.

He starts to think about the ethical and social responsibility pertaining on how people make other feel, while performing daily ordinary activities. He starts imagining people in his head, people whom he is trying to convince of his thinking. He start with simple things first and tells them that you can say hello in many ways, including an enthusiastic way that gives energy, and another depressed way that makes people feel sorry for you. This can be easily extended to the way you look and talk to people of course. Arrogance can show in your voice, in the way you look at people, and even the things you own. People are free to own things of course! But they have social responsibility to be careful and not let the things they own reflect on their behavior, and most importantly the essential characteristic of modesty and kindness.

“Maybe my stare was an unfair over-reaction that provoked the drunken man”, Jack admits to himself justifying the attacker’s offence because he has been judging the man since he saw him, making himself an ethical offender and perhaps the drunkard was able to sense such an offense but wasn't able to inhibit the compulsive reaction that made him want to hit Jack. At the same time, he acknowledges the fact that he is overly justifying for the poor evil drunkard. Jack is indeed usually cognitively dissonant and even over the simplest of matters.

But why did Jack start to think of that man? Jack is remembering a man whose everlasting impression in his mind would always be as an evil drunkard who has done many wrongdoings. But what was that man’s first wrongdoing? What was his first evil? How innocent was that man before his first wrong-doing as an adult!  Jack imagines a sequence of wrongdoings that very gradually increase in their evil, which led to the Ronald that he now knows. He momentarily allows a harsh thought that makes him and Ronald essentially the same: both of them started wrongdoing and have infinite potential to continue being evil.

All this runs through his head while in his short trance, wondering if he’s ever going to be a good man again. Indeed, a lot of things can happen in the mind, in such a short period of time. If only this realm is explored more often by the buzzing people around Jack, his world would be a much peaceful place. His mind wants to take him to yet another detour, but Sally is too worried about him to leave him at peace.

He’s been aware that she has been calling him for a while now, perhaps for 2 minutes or so, which is much longer than the usual time he can ignore someone insisting to get a response from him. Still her last call make him so alert and responds with surprise like someone who has been woken up with a loud scary yell. He reflexively turns his head towards her, says yes clearly and quickly, and waits for her response. He is annoyed by her question “are you ok?” but skillfully responds with a polite “yes, thank you.” A typically boring conversation follows.

Mailman Jack

Jack was riding his bicycle in the street near his home. The street is usually busy, even in the early morning but he rarely hears any horns or angry drivers yelling at each other. Everybody drives safely and happily.

Jack is on his way to the post office where he works, he hopes he won't have to deliver a lot of high priority or urgent mail today, because it is colder than usual and he only has his old bike as the means to deliver the mail around the small town.

He arrives to his office on time, only to find that only the building's guard who is responsible of unlocking its main entrance in the morning is there. His other colleagues are late which is as unusual as the cold weather of today.

Normal mail can wait for tomorrow he thinks with the image of Larry, his manager, on his mind. Searching through the pile of mail on his desk, which was put by Larry the day before, he hopes he won't have any urgent mail which must be delivered today even if it's so cold that his colleagues, even Sally who is never late, is today.

Larry's job is to assign the mail, and make sure everything runs smoothly in this small but busy post office. He splits the big pile of mail that the mail office receives and puts a smaller pile on each mailman's desk as to assign the pile to the mailman who sits at that desk. Larry doesn't really go through the big pile of mail, he just randomly splits them into piles that only look equal in size.

Jack finds three urgent mails today to three different parts of town. He was shocked on this unlucky cold day as he usually gets only one urgent mail, if any at all. He is let down, and wonders what's in Sally's pile on his left, and Robert's pile on his right.

He thinks that coming late to the office is a kind of cheating, as being lazy and not on time is not as much hard work as waking up early to be sure to be on time. At least that is what it looks like. He thinks that maybe because he didn't take advantage of the weather to cheat today and stay in his warm bed for an extra hour until it's at least a tiny bit warmer, he can reward himself by sneaking the three urgent mail letters into the piles of colleagues.

He is surprised that he's capable of thinking of such dishonest ways, especially considering the fact that he never cheated, at least not since he graduated from high school. A passing thought of whether his body and mind are having difficulty handling the pains and even the joys that life brings, comes to his mind. But distributing the letter piles is just a matter of luck, and who decides luck? No one does, because no one can! So even if he puts the urgent mail into his colleagues’ piles, he wouldn't be changing anyone's luck at all.

Finally he convinced himself to put one urgent letter in Sally’s pile and another in Robert’s pile. He returned back to his desk, walking heavily with guilt of selfishness that he feels have stained his pure heart. He sat down holding the last urgent letter in his shaky hands on his rotating chair turned back to the desks at the back where he contemplated putting the last letter on one of the piles there. He was thinking of the embarrassment that he’ll get if he was caught sneaking letters into other people’s work piles.

Jack was holding the last urgent letter when Sally entered the office. She was whiter than usual because of the cold. She uttered ‘brrrr’ when she entered, alluding to the cold and said ‘Good morning’. Jack was still on his chair hesitant when she entered to his surprise so he quickly turned his face and put the letter on his pile responding with a faint and weak ‘good morning’. He knew that the thought of cheating made him weak and confused, almost like an intoxicated person. Sally attributed those observation to the cold.

…continued: http://storyunicorn.blogspot.ae/2014/03/mailman-jack-2.html...

Story of the Mad Man's Stories

It was a stormy night and the grieving sea was raging with anger at life’s decisions. It was perilous, but the adventure kept him a safe distance from the painful confines of safety. His old hands were shaking, of fear of the tremendous task of leaving a legacy, or the raging sea, and the cold damp weather. He was trying desperately to write on the worn out papers on front of him, but the thunder was too much for him to continue.

He was just staring out of the window unto the storm outside, only imagining himself to be an old captain in a ship under the perils of a storm amidst the sea, thunder, and scared greedy men. He wasn't old, just a troubled man youth in his mid-twenties, and he was perfectly healthy, physically. The thunder put him back from the window to the sofa, where he resumed his mindless staring at the fiery flames.

He did not drink because he believed it stood in the great ways of his own mind, which was perfectly able of magic, even without external chemical stimulation. He knew he was stimulated and overly so in one way or another, for his mind reacted explosively with every big or small thing his eyes were laid upon, and with each explosion a graph of ideas keeps infinitely expanding into a universe of its own, parallel to other previously formed universes, still unresolved and still expanding.

He had to get back to the cottage, despite the fact that the heat was almost blinding his vision. The forest fire was crazily raging, but so was his inclination to get back to his cottage and get chest in which he has put all of things he cherished and gathered throughout the years, but most importantly, the memories, all those journals and diaries written by him and his close friends and lovers. His was losing his memory and the only link to his identity, to reality was the set of papers in that chest, so he thought his life was lost anyways, if he can’t get to the cottage which was already on fire and rescue the chest, the memories.

The sweat was running through his face filled with scratches that he got trying to squeeze through all the tree branches and rough bushes, he’s lost the hair on his arms for the fires of this burning forest. Like a raging predator with fixed eyes upon him, the fire as if intentionally targeting the man, suddenly leaped all around to surround him. Now he was no choice but to do so, as he sees his memories fading with the burning cottage. 

His mind prefers those imaginary worlds and events to protect itself from the dulling nature of his safe and quiet home, but turns back to reality when imagination gets too harsh and the day dreams become nightmares, like what always happens.

He pulls back his face from the fireplace, and pushes back the sofa which he realizes was too close to the fire.

He knows he better find a solution to his exquisite but turbulent mind soon, for he was realizing a truth: he is a mad man. But until he find a solution to his dramatic fantasies that are going out of control, he will write a story every day, and give them to the Story Unicorn.