Saturday, August 20, 2011

"Small Fish" Episode 3: "Missing X"

Lay down on your old college futon and relax with a large cup of Hawaiian Hazelnut coffee but focus all your attention to your daily dose of math in the morning. If you are starting to panic, do not worry. Just try to remember whatever you can surmise from high school Intermediate Algebra: the lessons of fractions, missing variables, and the complexity of polynomials. While attending school, I never took a liking to math as some of my nerdy friends did. I saw the rigidity of Algebra as being too linear for my subjective mind to soak in. Sometimes the human spirit cannot seem to fathom the idea of a solved answer without a little more explanation added on to the side. Society as a whole, like children, desire the emotional milk to take some of the bitterness away from the brash truth. As I flip through the coffee stained pages of my yearbook, I reflect about all those monotonous classes I had long ago and they raise many questions to mind. Maybe my old mathematics professors saw the beauty, the inner love story, the inner heartache, or simply the journey of life in the algebraic expressions they taught the class. Improper fractions symbolizing "imperfect" relationships and giving the proper steps on how to take the initiative to solve and simplify the situation. Beautiful moments in life undergo an equation through all the right circumstances and work themselves out to be positive whole numbers in the end. You never know. What about those people who do not experience the ecstasy or the trial, but feel something missing in the equation, in that case, how do you find your missing "x" variable? Laurie, an intelligent 27 year old law student, in the arms of her boyfriend, Gil, a 30 year old bartender, found herself trying to conceive the idea that they remained solid together after so long. Opposites in their own right, yet extremely compatible. Him with the wild child reputation and her with a sophisticated demeanor seemed like a match made in cinematic heaven. As happy as she found herself with Gil, she couldn't help but wonder if there was something lacking. At times she felt him close, very close. Other times Laurie felt him thousands of miles away. Everytime she questioned his distance, he would reply, "work." Work was not the problem. She murmured under a sigh, "the problem is you." Later that night is when the epiphany dreaded by most women finally hit her like a speeding bullet. His phone rang. It was 2:00 in the morning. It was Tonica. A full time stripper who lived right next door. Laurie heard the voicemail that was left. Gil's love was being shared with another woman.

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