February and the neighbourhood had already acquired the yellowed patina of retrospect. I walked down the pavement staring at my quickening shoes. I was quite slack-jawed. Twenty-one years old.
Autumn melting when we left. It still felt disingenuous to talk about seasons. The year was still new and smug and tense. Things jumbled and blured, babbled in cliches. I wanted to write some amazing novel, but I could not think of any definable plot. My days were storied in the most bovine of ways.
"Everything is autobiographical", I copped that quote from someone quoting Lucien Freud. I had never read any Lucien Freud, but quoting someone's quote made me feel learned and superior. I felt like all my life I had merely been imitating intelligence. One day, like a hat-trick someone would uncap my brain and find no substance- mere articulation.
This articulation would manifest itself in a little crustacean, something from a Disney film, sitting on the topmost nodules of my cartoonishly pink brain, conducting thought-waves with a pair of perfectly polished claws.
"Don't blame me," the crustacean would say. "I'm just doing what the boss says."
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