“On Ongoingness: Four Stages” by Alison C. Powell (Fiction ’10)

On Ongoingness: Four Stages

To the East

You were twenty-three and did not know what to do. You had an idea for yourself, so you followed it. A place and a time. This is you all over. You maintain now that the idea was to go to a big place to learn what to do. You sold your hours for pennies, the trade: you would appear at the coldly precise time and disappear eight oiled hours later, troubling no one in between. Hours of performance held at each end by fixtures of friendlessness. No one is playing a game. No one is drinking from a common cup. No one wants to be there. And yet, you stay. Good for you.