A Character's Thoughts or What I Do When I Eat Alone (also not a tiny story)

Because we all have our own answers, albeit hard to find. Here is an exercise to find them

My books are filled with surprises, ticket stubs, love letters, forgotten photos, postcards, stories scribbled hastily on napkins and airplane bags conveniently placed for the nauseous traveller or the paperless story teller. I have two stacks of books set to be abandoned to the lonesome street corner, for whoever may so desire their company. They currently sit in my bedroom, each stacked 1/4 of the way to the ceiling. I have suffered through them looking to salvage the morsels of detail about my life; but I am sure I have missed something. Absolutely certain that the orphaned History of Economic Thought, Totch's Everglade Tales or the Pictoral Anthology of Serial Killer Art will house an overlooked photo of a forlorn puppy, a penned drawing of the man who haunts me or a ticket stub to a low rent wrestling match on Lombard St. I will surely have forgotten the love letter I wrote in anger and hid away, the poem about how I hate poetry or the fledgling idea for a theatrical adventure into the soulful lives of star polo players.

But not today, today I did not lose one of the most significant scribblings I have produced in my life. In a discarded magazine covering the triumph of "the most" intelligent smart car (which obviously has yet to manifest anywhere in the Americas) I found a page of black inked illegibility. It was a simple exercise I performed while eating alone, a venture I like to refer to as "getting smart". I have always felt that those who dine alone in public must be brilliant, most of them are buried in books, others watch, quietly absorbing every detail around them, undistracted, free of polite chatter from bothersome friends or acquaintances... they are the thinkers of our times, the silent philosophers... watch them, do not disturb them, but watch.

Aside from lovely digression, I was taking a writing class at the time, torn between two stories, one I loved and one who would not go away. In my incessant complaining, as us Jews are wont to do, my lovely and long gone boyfriend advised that I have a character "describe me". describe me? The writer... the uninvolved keystone?

So what the hell....

What resulted caused my hair follicles to stand on end, a chill to lick the length of my spine and a cavern to be blown in the mountain of my unattained thoughts......

This is the simple address of a character to her writer,

"Do you know what you are?  Do you?
Stop avoiding me. Stop treating us as if we don't exist NOW!
You can't put us on a shelf. We won't wait.They didn't. Ok, so they aren't dead but they aren't jumping through hoops for your affection.
You are so afraid.
We represent everything your afraid of; everything that can be put of until tomorrow.
You think you love someone? You think you love this?
You're frightened. That's why I'm here. You're going to torture me. I'm going to be sent away when Vanity gets sick. I'm going to rape and be raped. I'm going to kill myself over and over again and I'm going to survive. I am going to be great, I'm going to be you. So you can't just set me aside.
They aren't interested in you. Not right now. Right now it's me.
You need me.
And more than anything..... I need you."

It is as base and simple as can be, but absolutely transforming and it was paramount in allowing the story who would not be ignored win out. And in the end I wrote the best story I have ever written in my life.

Try it... What do you think it would take to destroy the facade of your presumptions?