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Title: }} contradictions
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Francesca Moretti - October 16, 2007 09:31 PM (GMT)
    The first time she had been to the coffee bar, it was one of those chaotic spring days when everything seemed to be on her mind. The Family was in the middle of yet another one of its battles that Francesca was supposed to know nothing about. It was impossible not to, though, and the stress of her exams combined with issues that most didn’t have to deal with drove her to the brink of insanity. She’d spend hours locked up in her apartment, refusing to open the doors for anyone. She just forgot about one simple fact: she gave one of her good friends in school the key…just in case something happened.

    And they just happened to believe that something was up. Dragging Fran from her self-enforced isolation and out into the rest of the world. Activities that most girls Francesca’s age then would have thought made the perfect afternoon: lunch with friends, shopping, a movie, none of them really appealed to Fran. By eight that evening, she had been begging them to let her go home, that she had tons of stuff waiting for her, but they decided to go to one last stop…and now Francesca’s name was scripted boldly on the bar for all to see (although it was probably covered by a fresh layer of sharpie signatures by now).

    Since then, Mean Bean had been kind of a haven for the Moretti girl. Most of its patrons were several years younger than her, but she knew quite a few of them from the college. Plopped back in one of the bean bags with a notebook in front of her, she could spend hours just relaxing. Most of the time, she would end up talking to either a complete stranger or another random person, but her times were never boring nor chaotic.

    Nestled in one of the bean bags, Francesca today had the contents of her bag stacked in her lap, a cup of espresso perched on a small table beside her. Her dissertation was almost there, having made it through yet another edit. People just couldn’t make things easy. She had to elaborate here, kill half the detail there, justify why she had placed that over there. And in a week when she handed in her next revision, she’d receive yet another stack of edits.

    She couldn’t lie and say the entire process was easy. Hell, it was anything but, but it was also the only way she could get what she wanted in the end. There had been nights when she had gotten only an hour or two of sleep in between her associate professorship and the work she had been putting in on this damn book. Lines of fatigue were beginning to form under her eyes which seemed to be redder than usual from a lack of rest. But she’d been getting a lot done, and sometimes for progress a few sacrifices had to be made.

    Her eyesight focused on the words in front of her, she tried to focus on the words that had been scrawled across her neatly typed pages. Red. Why did comments always have to be in red ink? It was so harsh on the eyes, and in Francesca’s current state, made things even more difficult to see. The words she did make out though, made her snort. Did they not read her thesis? Did they not comprehend the basic premise of what she was trying to achieve? Obviously not. Either that, or they were trying to insert their ideas and take out her own. Reaching down into her bag beside her, Francesca pulled out a notebook and a pen and started taking notes of her own.

    the comment on pg. 82 is irrelevant for the following reasons…

    the wording of the phrase on pg. 124 in the third paragraph doesn’t flow with the rest of the chapter.

    there is no research to back up the suggested claim on pg. 27

    And the list went on. Occasionally, she’d take a sip from her cup beside her as she worked on filling up the pages of her notebook on comments on the comments that had been made on her draft. Tonight would be another long night as she worked to make the necessary edits and prepare a printed rationale for each edit she omitted. A bit obsessed? That was one way of putting it, but over the years Francesca learned that the only way to accomplish anything was to be as obsessive-compulsive over it as possible. That was how she had managed to make a reputation for herself away from the family; that was how she actually managed to get into Columbia without being completely stigmatized; that was how she was going to get this damn dissertation done in a few months. Seven hundred pages and two years of non-stop research and this is what she was left with: a few measly edits by people who wanted to manipulate her work with their ideas.

    Letting out a sigh, she brought her cup of coffee up to her lips yet again before putting pen back to paper. Time was of the essence and something she didn’t feel great about wasting.


Adeline Daggett - October 17, 2007 04:06 PM (GMT)

(ooc: Hope you don't mind me dropping by.)

Time; it was perhaps the biggest adversary of all men. Had anyone thought to ask – and she most certainly would never care to bother with such silly questions and such silly creatures– that’s probably what they all would have said, or at least that’s what each and every one of them would’ve ruminated. One thing even the most powerful of men had no control of, that interminable onwards march, the universal constant and the law of nature mankind had no other choice but to abide to. In the end, once the idiotic specks finally realized all the options were merely temporary prolongations of the inevitable. Fatuously hoping their modern techniques would make any difference in the face of mortally catabiosis, that gravity wouldn’t take its toll eventually. Desperately attempting to cling onto fading looks even when mirror reflected a figure they themselves wouldn’t so much as touch with a stick. Adamantly reassuring themselves they’d manage to reach their goal, finish their life’s work before their own body or their own mind betrayed them, or worse -- both. No one wanted to grow old, taste the acidic bitterness of age upon their tongue, enervated and senile. Why else would so many myths revolve around the Fountain of Youth, why would legends be told about the cup that petty carpenter and charlatan had drank from during his last supper? Why would so many people dream of stopping or turning back the clock? Pathetic mortals, all of them.

Adeline was on a job. It’s seemingly easy to become a critic without anyone knowing that you are one. Her secrecy of her job seemed a little private to her but as long as she’s still finding for a job, Adeline would rest her case and earn her daily income through giving out tough, mean criticism. Not many find a critic job more enjoyable as she does. In truth, Adeline is being ignorant of her past. She tries not to focus her attention on what her past connects to the future or even the present. After years of resenting her father, Adeline decided to give it a stop and erase all her memories that connect her to him. Oh how she loathe that man. Adeline was certain that there would be no other alive being that she would abhor and be disgusted to than her father. But ever since the announcement of his decease, Adeline tries to drop all of it. She came to realization that her antipathy towards that man whom no longer exists had caused an effect on her life. Therefore she would’ve only an option that she couldn’t runaway from – she would have to be ignorant of her past and drop everything she have ever gone through in the past years with her ex-living dad. Backing into the main point, with her traumatic past and inevitable present, Adeline is best to be a critic where she can fully take her mind of on something else rather than her own memories.

Stepping into the coffee shop, Adeline would’ve given a few credits on how the ‘Mean Bean’ was decorated if only she were to like the mixture of the eighties and the modern styles. Bean bags are certainly comfortable furniture to sit on but Adeline would preferably imagine those bean bags in a home rather than in a coffee shop. Adeline inhaled the intoxicating aroma of the coffee coming over from the bar. Her job today was to go around town and write reports on the shops before handing it in over the following day. Just having a bad start during the morning, Adeline concluded that the morning that she thought she was going to experience wasn’t going to be so bad after all with a little help from getting the caffeine she wanted. After placing her order and grabbing her drink, Adeline subsided herself into the corner of the room where she could analyze the place quickly and having a great view of the many customers that enters.

It didn’t take her long to finish the report, after having her laptop place out. She examined that many of the customers who comes into the shop were college and universities students and most of them having their own share of computer technology. If one is to observe her and study, they would easily have mistaken her as a normal university student - just like most of them in the room.




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