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Freitag, 7. März 2003 |
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Ingo understands Juliet's dilemma. 11:04:50 PM  comments []
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Juliet's night. Juliet sits down at her desk and writes a letter, a love letter, in her own words, in her own style, using a turquoise ink pen and sprays some perfume on it as she's done, because it's all about love. It's to Jonathan, the guy from Australia she met eight weeks ago in that odd little bar in Singapore. Then she takes an envelope and carefully sticks the letter into it. The envelope gives her a new clean bit of paper that she uses to write Johathan's address on, sticks a post stamp on it, and writes "Air Mail" on it. The envelope will protect her letter from being stained, losing its pleasant scent and protects it from curious eyes. She rushes downstairs, walks up to the next mailbox and drops the letter in -- all in hope that she will get an answer in the same spirit. Early in the morning, the postman will eventually make his rounds to pick up the mail from the mailbox, and the letter will be timestamped and then transported all the way, by truck, plane, train and bicycle to the (hopefully) overwhelmed and joyful Jonathan, who will (hopefully) immediately pick up a clean sheet of paper to respond. Maybe it would be better if he wouldn't respond, maybe he should better forget her and she him. On her way home from the mailbox, right outside her door, she stops by the little convenience store at the corner to grab some milk and coffee for the next morning. Because the lotto jackpot went up to an insane sum this week, she decides to play; something she usually wouldn't do. She gets a lotto card, checks a few numbers, flips the card over and writes her address on the back of the card -- that's how it works here -- and gives the card to the store attendant. He runs the card through a machine which reads the infomation off the card and prints up a receipt listing her numbers and showing the time, store location and a reference number. She pays, takes coffee, milk and the lotto receipt and walks back the few feet to her building and back upstairs. Maybe she'll win -- maybe she shouldn't win. Thinking about it, it would be a very bad thing if she did. Because back up in her apartment, Juliet needs to go about her business -- a dark, stealthy business. She does not only have a romatic side in her, but also this other side -- she's a spy -- and of course her name isn't Juliet. She takes another piece of paper and this time she takes that pen with the special ink which will become invisible except if held under a special light and eventually will disappear entirely. She writes a short notice about what she found out these last 3 days and takes another envelope. This time, the envelope is of a different style, not paper but a small plastic tube. It's there for protection and equipped with a special mechanism that will drench the message in a bright pink color if opened incorrectly. As she's leaving the house, she makes sure that noone is following her by taking the usual odd turns that will take her 60 minutes through the city for a distance that would only take her 5 minutes if she drove straight to where she's going. She stops at a street corner and drops the plastic tube into a street sewer; one of those who have a little basket keeping the most coarse street dirt out of the rainwater -- it's one of the well known dead-letter boxes of her agency (well-known in her agency only, of course). Three hours later, a truck in the colors of the city sanitation dept. stops by the sewer. Having returned to her cozy place, Juliet is still nevous. Going near those places is dangerous. She can't sleep. So she decides to prepare herself a bubblebath to get some rest and relax. Maybe she'll find a way to get all of her life together in peace ... some day. 1:11:15 PM comments []
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