#the norarosa project

[restekova]

hi amelia! i read your story about norarosa and the wolf on the moon very long ago but i loved it and its still been in my head all this time. i know this is a lot to ask but i would really really like to read it again. is there any way you could post it again? thank you very much for reading 💗

thank YOU for reading, anon! how sweet! 💗  you’re right-- i took the story down temporarily so that i could use it as part of an ARG event i was doing for school, which is over now, and i don’t think the story is up anywhere right now, so here it is again for you! i’m so happy that you read one of my stories and liked it so much you thought about it later... thank you for this message!!!

Norarosa demolished her cottage on the moon from the outside in. 

She had against her only one-sixth of the Earth's gravity, and as allies a long-nurtured fantasy, and a sledgehammer with a handle that fit well in her hands. She was doing it as close to the way she had always wanted to as reality would allow. The bare lunar trees that twined gray trunks round the exterior of the house grew little eyes to watch. First she destroyed the window on the front door. The glass shattered in on the very first swing, as feeble as it had been the day she came. Changing angle she swung again and again, cracking and battering, until the door sagged on its hinges like something unconscious and left her room through which to walk. She stepped over the window shards and heard them crunch, heard them grind into powder against the black hardwood. Here there was an end table with a crystal bowl full of potpourri. She hefted back on one leg and swung in a low, slow arc, the orbit of a heavenly body. The framed print of Starry Night was gone next. New craters in the cream wall. Long strides over the wreckage into the kitchen, catch the sink by its dilated faucet and wrench it out from the counter, smash the plastic cabinets and hear all the decorated plates fall to the floor and break. Cave in the oven door, wreck the range stovetop, metal into bramble, shatter the porcelain rooster stained with pink watercolor on its gobble and beak, the teapots, the hanging plants. Norarosa-Norarosa, she turned on her saddle-shoe heel, took two long strides into the living room, tossed the sledgehammer in the air, and caught it in her other hand. She went first for the mantle with the picture of Andersen the white borzoi who couldn't breathe moon air and would now be long dead, then the tiffany tea service, then the photo album with the paisley cloth cover on the coffee table, the watercolor of the Bengal tigers, the old-inherited ashtray with the mother-of-pearl handle, the brass radio, the TV set with its insectoid antennae, the glass case of formaldehyde butterflies, and she did not realize that she was crying until she got to the sewing kit, although in fact she had been crying since the tigers.

Twenty years later, on Earth, she would be sitting alone at a round little table nearest the bay window in Spyglass Coffee with the potted succulents on the inner sill, where one could easily see the crooked, torn-up sidewalk outside with the small houses on different levels of terrain with the violets in their front gardens, and she would be drinking cafe au lait from a white ceramic cup with blue detail on the rim, holding a notebook and a pencil. She would be thinking about her own writing. An unrelated and sensitive high school girl with long brown hair down to her waist would buy a regular coffee with no milk and for a moment she would see Norarosa sitting there, but she would think nothing of it. The truth was, even though the two events had no logical connection, due to a real or imagined type of butterfly effect, if the unrelated girl had thought of Norarosa at any point later in time, even just to— for no apparent reason— spontaneously remember the young woman with an oddly calligraphic silhouette who sat in the coffee shop staring into space with her chin on the heel of her hand, the sort of sudden image recollection that has no meaning, then, another five years later, the Bear Mountain Day Care would not have caught its tragic fire. But even though it was technically preventable in this way no one could be said to blame, because it wasn’t a reasonable thing to expect of anybody, who would think of it later, a girl absently chewing on the eraser of her pencil in a coffee shop, thinking about her own bad habits regarding revision.

[restekova]

well! it’s over

my semester (in recap):

this man visited our school and read some of his work. i was chosen to be the opening reader, and we did a joint q&a session afterwards. (i read norarosa and these two pieces.) he is a wonderful, down-to-earth man and i got to hear a lot of cool stories and get a copy of his book signed by him!

my flash fiction teacher is such a slut and doesn’t give a fuck.

i read these books for my advanced poetry course: catalogue of unabashed gratitude by ross gay, my private property by mary ruefle, forgiveness forgiveness by shane mccrae, winter stars by larry levis, crush by richard siken. i recommend all of them. go! go forth and buy and read them (or check them out from your local library)! now! before it’s too late!

got introduced to, and studied, plato, descartes, hume, kant, and derridas, and studied barthes, in my guided independent study course. it was meant to be an introduction to literary theory, but veered off into a general philosophy introduction pretty fast. that said! still really glad i took it, still have a lot to learn.

found out my department head is a massive house of leaves fan.

wrote two short books (!!), one of “poetry” and one of “fiction” (i’m rapidly learning that the difference between those two is not so binary) as final projects for classes. not sure what i’m gonna do with them, if anything.

spent all my spending money cause i can’t budget worth SHIT, so i’m gonna get a part-time job next semester.

discovered the magic of the convenience store down the street combined with the keurig in the student lounge.

did not kill a man!

how was your semester, followers?