A Fragment of a Story About Min

I don't have the discipline or the imaginative scope to write fiction. The best I can do is drift along with the thoughts that occur to me in the space of ten or so minutes. Yesterday I tried it. The results were directionless, but I hope they were at least interesting.

Here's a fragment of fiction I tried many months ago, with introductory rambling. My brother, David, provided the name:

If I were to write a story about a character named Min, what sort of story would it be? Is Min male or female? Where does she live? Does that even matter?

My imagination is too underdeveloped for me to know how to do this.

She made pancakes one morning, but she couldn't find the syrup. She was out of butter too, so she had to eat them dry. But the coffee was hot and black.

In the corner of the room sat an angry pile of abandoned art supplies. She had used her entire paper ration in the space of two weeks, and though she was unsatisfied with her drawings, she had yet to make the decision to throw them away. The ideas had refused to come. The lines, though often converging at the appropriate angles, refused to represent either her thought, or her view of the abandoned meeting house across the street.

She longed for the meeting house across the street, with a longing that made no sense at all. She thought, how sad that the space had been left empty for so long. There should have been someone there to care for it, someone to fill the rooms with lamplight by night, someone to trim the hedges, repair the wall, sweep away the cobwebs, bring it to life, fill the halls with voices of spirit and joy, but there was none of that now. Hadn't been for some time.

At least there was light in her little room, and she had windows. Windows to watch from, windows through which to see. The windows were what made her life possible. Without light from the sun by day and the moon by night, she might just curl up into a ball and never try again. The light called her out of sadness. It called her out of gloom. But what it wouldn't do, and never could, was restore to her what had once been lost.

He was watching her. She knew it. Waiting to see what she would do. Would she reject the gift that he had left her? Would she ever remember to ask him what it was for? She had such a hard time remembering, remembering to ask him that question. Sometimes it was there, right at the tip of her tongue, but then she would swallow it, embarrassed. She thought somehow to know without asking. She thought perhaps that for once he would refuse to do his duty by her, maybe just this once, she would fall and he wouldn't catch her. Maybe just this once, if she stayed very, very still, he would forget about her, let her plunge. Maybe just this one time she would lose his grace, and she would finally get what she had coming to her. The earth had bewildered her, until now she preferred his judgment to his love.

I thought about her that day, as I tried again to understand myself. Why would she prefer his judgment to his love? Did she think his judgment would be easier to bear? Did she think that judgment was better because it gave her a measure of control? I thought of her as nothing but a dream I'd dreamed myself. I had never been quite sure if she were real. And maybe that was her problem too. She couldn't figure out whether she were real either. That might explain why the drawings never worked.

Whatever the truth of the matter might be, it was time for me to go about my business.