another english assignment
Posted by xsihuii at 09:08 PM on November 12, 2008 in Life, High School.
thought that i'd like to share my pastiche. i put in a lot of my soul in this and i feel that it effectively reflects a piece of me. (:
As sixteen-year-old Sophia reached out for that pink-stripped Oral-B toothbrush – which apparatus that addressed her every morning before she embarked yet another journey of a series of unexpected events, and every night when the soul was able to recede into that oasis of peace buried beneath layers upon layers in the heart; when the contractions of tensed muscles fatigued during the daily escapade, knowing that the coast was clear and safe, could finally relax – that leaned idly in the large translucent cup beneath the mirror, she studied the pallid image that stared bluntly in front of her. Her brainwaves were almost static (after all, one who only just awoke from a deep dream required moments of stillness to regain one’s consciousness) yet her instinctive response liberated a million-and-one emotions and yielded a million-and-one questions (her fingers now wrapped the stem of the toothbrush; her arm which held loosely perpendicular to her waist hovered absentmindedly in midair, like a weary warrior with his sword on battlefield straining painfully his last remaining kilojoules for combat)…What was this she was encountering? Who was that girl; that figure; that thing; that shell? What does this mean to this world or does this even mean anything at all? Abruptly, Sophia’s mother entered the bathroom now and in spite of her eyes looking down on the floor and at objects as she silently moved around with her activities, which seemed as though she was avoiding the initial eye-contact with Sophia, Sophia could still easily detect the solemnity, distance and exhaustion from her aging and melancholic countenance. (Sophia grabbed the toothpaste and applied a little less than sufficient of mint Colgate on to her toothbrush for ‘thriftiness is golden,’ her mother had once said, and began brushing her teeth, feeling the cool minty foam in her mouth and played with the rhythm of brushing up and down according to the clock’s tick-tock of the minute hand.) Now, both mother and daughter studied themselves in the mirror. Perhaps it was only a reflection. ‘But how then could one’s reflection – simply a scientific theory in physics, a natural apparition – define all of what and who one was?’ Sophia thought. All the troubles and sorrows, the mishaps and burdens, the successes and failures, the discontentment and desires shrunk to something so irrelevant, so inconspicuous, as though nothing ever happened and as though no emotion ever existed… One could look into the mirror and see them all, or one could look into the mirror and they swiftly disappear.
‘If anyone were to ask (if anyone even dared to ask) me about regrets, my life’s greatest regret is marriage,’ Sophia’s mother thought. She had warned Sophia about the dangers of marriage: Marriage is the deathbed of love; Love is overrated; You will have a tough life after marriage; If you insist in marrying, you better seek a good husband, a rich husband much older than you are so that he will take care of you. ‘It is my job to keep my children safe and secured’, she assured herself. She would go downstairs into the kitchen soon and find her hands fumbling busily with the bread and butter and chocolate jam (A part of her still detested the children eating chocolate jam on their sandwiches for it was unhealthy and the fact that it was 23-yuan and undeniably the most expensive jam she had ever bought. Yet after countless warnings and nagging did she have a choice but to give way to the children and give them what makes them happy?) The children was probably the only thing that have held her and her husband together, and the only reason that she remained in the house. She recollected still scenes of the golden memories of herself and her husband, and as though she was studying a film strip, she constantly rewind and fast-forwarded the series of events that occurred, so that the extreme contrast, the extreme circumstances and the extreme cruelty rendered by change and Time were revealed to light. She looked at her daughter brushing her teeth and summoned the same image ten years ago when Sophia was only six and she knew that she would reminisce this very moment when Sophia hits adulthood. She heaved a long sigh of grief and sorrow.
Sophia stole a swift glance at her mother from the corner of her eye as she and her mother had lifted the taps of the two sinks that laid aside each other to release the fountain of water together at the same time. Sophia rinsed the mint foam from her mouth and washed her toothbrush while glimpsing at her mother as she bent into the sink and splashed cool water on her face. No one spoke. Silence lingered in the deep fissures between mother and daughter. Words were left unsaid. Sophia scrutinized the fountain as it poured rapidly, colorlessly, innocently, mercilessly and like Time, it does not wait; and in that split second, Sophia seemed to witness and hear all her achievements, her desires, her ambitions, her strength to dream surge down the sink and into the drains – for what were dreams for when they were so transient. So easily. So fleetingly. She suddenly realized that both she and her mother needed a rock that would and could withstand the callous ebb and flow of the ocean so as to rest, to breathe, to reflect, to find wholeness. Yet how could one ever obtain such a rock? For a moment, she let herself drown in a chasm of unanswered questions; like a famished peasant, she savored the remaining glimmer of hope and held tightly onto the rapidly fading aftertaste of strength and determination. Then after placing the toothbrush back in where it belonged, Sophia left the bathroom for yet another journey of unexpected events.