And so I like making playlists for everything I write. š¶ š¼ šµ
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The loving hug. The gentle touch. The tender pat.They sound nice, for those who don't kill or get killed.
Laika is nine years old and her hands have never touched anything.
āTouched,ā as in felt the friction, heat, or coolness of another person or object.
Because, you see, her hands make matter vanish. It only takes less than a second. Way before she feels a thing, that which is touched disappears,Ā poof.
Even the milk cartons that the nuns install around her wrists to serve as shields. Even the air molecules that her fingers brush against. And sometimes, yes, even living organisms.
Laika might be the loneliest girl on Earth. She lives with the void.
āHowlās Moving Castle,ā the movie version, is an anime from Japan. In it, a giant flying castle shows up. The movie is so, so beautiful.
The allure of animation is that the things you couldnāt possibly choose as a creator (if you were to work with real humans) can be chosen, can be fine-tuned in the animated world.
Iām talking about the world and what it looks like, quite literally. Not just the laws of physics, such as āOh, in this world, people fly.ā Itās more than that.
For example, if you decide that in your animated world, peopleās eyes will take up half their faces, then thatās the world they live in. None of the characters will suddenly shout out, āBut this isnāt what real people look like!ā
Unicornsājust the thought of their cloying eyes, big and empty like smooth marbles.
Rainbowsātheir multicolored elation, delirious and fanatic like a drunkardās idea of good company.
And the noise of perpetual laughter where itās so loud and consistent that it becomes visible. As in, you can see the vibrations in the air, and itās all dizzy, sounds become visuals and visuals become sounds until you can taste the disorientation on your tongue.
Thatās horror for me.
Something has to be wrong if a person canāt stop laughing. Somethingās terribly wrong.
a city that is walkable (meaning, narrow roads with stuff to actually look at, like individual shops instead of department stores or malls and parking lots)
late night but safely lit without being glaring
fashionably drunk on some low-alcohol-degree drinks (ex: wine rather than vodka)
warm Asian soup-type dishes (ex: udon, honghabtang, stuff like that)
rivers (Why? I donāt know. Maybe because it flows? Maybe because on the riverside, thereās wind? Not too hot, not too cold?)
There was no in-between: either she was hungry or she was full. Between those two states, she forgot to think about the workload of her digestive system at all.
Was there too much or too little to process?
She didnāt know.
Plenty of other things screamed for her attention: the buzzing of her cell phone on the desk, the resulting rattling of little clips and pens, and her eyes involuntarily flitting toward the phone.
