A/N: Okay, I wrote this as my final for my humanities class. And it’s one of those that I had to use certain vocab words in. So, if something doesn’t make sense, that’s why. I don’t know if the bolded words will show up bold or not, but you might be able to figure it out. And I know that the end is pretty abrupt, but I hated the original ending that I wrote and then rewrote it and hated it again, so I just deleted it. So, if you’d love to, please read and drop a review for me! Thanks!!

Just Another Tuesday

Winnie woke to the honking of her alarm with a frown on her face, inwardly cursing the sunshine beaming through the mini-blinds into her eyes. She smacked the snooze button and rolled over, pulling the bedspread far over her head.

“Urgh, Tuesday,” she muttered under her breath before falling back into a light sleep.

Eventually she dragged herself out of bed, quickly dressing and brushing her teeth. She wasn’t in the mood to yank a brush through her tangled hair, so she didn’t and just left it hanging in her eyes. She didn’t really care what anyone else thought of her appearance. She was practically invisible wherever she went. And she never let her sharp eyes touch a mirror, so she never knew what she looked like.

She slowly made her way downstairs into the kitchen, stopping on the stairs as she always did to gaze at the watercolor painting hanging on the wall there. The shading and texture evident in the picture always amazed her, even though she looked at it every morning.

“Hey Mum,” Winnie remarked casually as she entered the kitchen. Her mother was sitting at the table with her feet propped up reading Volume one of a non fiction book titled Jesus Freaks, Winnie observed.

“Is that that book you found lying on the road the other day?” she asked, crossing the room to grab a freshly washed apple from the basket sitting on the counter.

“Yes,” her mother responded.

“The one about martyrs?”

“Yes.”

Winnie left then, going to the garage and getting into her gray Oldsmobile. She drove to the park as she did every Tuesday. When she got there, she took her apple and a book from her passenger seat and walked over to her bench, where she sat and pretended to read and enjoy the nature all around her.

“Were you at the opera the other night, Helen?” a woman off to the right asked the friend she was walking with.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. We were at the symphony last night, as well, and it was excellent,” Helen replied in a flat voice. “Robert took me for my birthday.”

“Wasn’t the prelude of the opera especially divine? That orchestra was absolutely amazing.” the other lady asked, ignoring the remark Helen made about her birthday.

“Oh yes, but I especially delighted in the program music. Who wrote the score for that one, do you know?”

“I’m not sure. But even just the harmony of that one man’s voice with that little girl’s was enough to make my night. Wouldn’t you think?”

“And the dynamics of the choir were astonishing. I was shocked that they were able to get that loud.”

“I know! And the drama they portrayed through their voices. It was almost like they were the actors themselves because they created such a fabulous atmosphere. I was amazed.”

“That man that played the part of the hero was absolutely handsome.”

“Classically good-looking, I thought.”

“Oh yes.”

“And the string quartet part was excellent.”

“I thought it was a quintet.”

“Well at any rate, the women’s dresses were amazing. I wonder who did them and if I could convince James to get me one.” She giggled.

“If you can convince your husband to spend that much money on you, I can definitely convince Robert.” They both giggled.

Their materialism disgusted her. Winnie tuned them out and decided to listen to a pair of teen girls that were sitting in the grass directly behind her. Winnie didn’t turn and look, but she could picture them rolling up the sleeves of their shirts, afraid of farmer tan lines, kicking off their sandals, and rolling up the bottoms of their blue jeans.

“I totally love the color and print of your shirt, Stace.”

“Thanks. Blue is such a primary color in my wardrobe. I just love wearing it.”

“Well, it really does compliment your style.”

“Thanks. So, what have you got on plan for the summer?”

“My family is going on vacation to the United Kingdom in two weeks. I’m really excited.”

“That’s an awesome place for a vacation.”

“I know that’s why I’m excited. I’m hoping to have a good time.”

“Well, I have ballet in fifteen minutes. So I have to get going,” said the first girl after a pause. “Call me before you leave for your trip and we’ll get together.”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

Winnie glanced down at her book. The concept of reading to her was absolutely absurd, as were a lot of different things, but she did do it from time to time, when there was no one to listen to. She remembered this book vaguely being a fiction about the apocalypse somehow. She thought she remembered it mentioning Allah or Yahweh or some sort of god, and quoting things in Hebraic that she didn’t understand. She wasn’t entirely sure, though. She glanced back up and stared around. She saw a crowd of people going into the chapel which was across the lake, on the mini pier. She noticed everything; right down to the green tint the bright grass gave her white shoes and the tone of the bird’s songs. Sometimes she considered life beautiful, sometimes a tragedy, but she was mostly always glad to be alive and felt lucky to be able to experience the beauty of the world. She sometimes considered it fate that she eavesdropped on the people that she did and she always felt that she was learning something, if their conversations weren’t foreshadowing something to come. It was predestination to her, which was a phrase that she used often. It gave her a reason for her being. She didn’t believe in God all that much, but she did sometimes. If she thought too much, she would get confused between free will and predetermination, but none of it had too much value to her. She read mythology often, considered Hades sometimes and often wondered what would happen to her when she died and what her requiem might be like.

A rather interesting looking pair of characters walked into Winnie’s perspective. They were carrying a bunch of pop art paintings and a picnic basket, and looked like the perfect image of a pop culture couple. They sat in the grass under an arch of trees and pulled a stereo out of the picnic basket along with a few sandwiches. They immediately turned on a jazz CD, a genre that Winnie really enjoyed, and even though the music was without lyrics, the girl sang the tune in her high soprano voice. Winnie, who used to play the piano, recognized the melody to be in the key of F and the timbre to be saxophone. The tempo was perfectly set to the rhythm that Winnie felt was present in the air. When the guy tuned in with his charming tenor voice, Winnie smiled.

She watched them as they ate their sandwiches, taking their time, and eventually getting into a conversation about the motif of modern pop art and other methods used to define pigment or some such that Winnie didn’t entirely understand. But she didn’t mind, she was leaning.

“How about the focal point of this one?” the guy asked with an excited tone.

“Yeah, the altarpiece almost. It’s so abstract, but almost like an allusion to van Gogh’s Starry Night, don’t you think? It does look similar,” remarked the girl.

“Did you know that this artist actually painted a suite of these? A quartet actually.”

“That’s so interesting. I’ve never heard of that being done before.”

“I know, I thought it was so cool. I’m thinking about trying something like that myself.”

“That would be so awesome. How will you do it?”

“Well, I was actually thinking of using street signs as a recurring theme. And maybe adding text with black tempera. Or maybe with computer art, to incorporate a new technology sort of feel. Maybe all those sonnets and ballads that I wrote. What do you think?”

“Fantastic idea! You could even use that icon for impressionist work that you were telling me about before. Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” replied the guy, getting a dreamy look on his face and gazing around. “This landscape is picturesque.” He reached into the picnic basket and pulling out a large sketchbook and a few pencils. “That line of trees over there is amazing. Would you mind if I sketched your portrait with the scenery, Becca?”

“I’d love it if you would. Where do you want me to sit?”

Winnie turned around to look toward the west, at the line of trees that the guy motioned toward. He was right, it was beautiful. Winnie had noticed it before. It always reminded her of something like a magical myth, one in which the pagans that lived in the forest were suddenly overcome with passion for the power of the sublime and they turn the forest into a symbol of their perfection, the most beautiful place in the world.

“Who are you the thought police?” Winnie was shaken out of her thoughts by a girl shouting incredulously at her mother.

“It was just a theory, dear, now you’re only proving to me that it’s true.”

“Whatever. You’re treating me like you completely don’t trust me at all. I’m not Frankenstein. You can trust me, you know.”

“I know that, sweetheart, but how am I supposed to trust you when you’ve been getting into all those bad situations, and not even letting me know what’s going on?”

“Who told you anyways?”

“I promised them that I wouldn’t tell you who they were.”
“Yeah, well I never asked for help anyway, so I don’t need it. Just leave me alone. Stay out of it.”

“Josephine, you’re causing a scene.”

“Does it look like I care?” And with that the girl stomped away.

It always broke Winnie’s heart to hear daughters fighting with their mothers. She’d never experienced a real relationship with her mother, and it hurt to think that a girl whose mother was giving her that chance was throwing it away. She sighed and turned back to her book. Soon she heard another pair of voices coming from her left.

“The state of nature reminds me of superman at twilight,” a guy’s voice said in a whimsical voice.

“What?!” another responded.
“Didn’t you think that was a good verse?”

“Reminded me of original sin actually. Now, please concentrate. We’ve got to have this song written by next Tuesday. Which is in one week. One week. That’s all the time we have until the show, Jay, so we have to concentrate.”

“Alright, alright.”

“Now, what was our first stanza again?”

“Oh, the oxymoron. ‘Hearing the Blues in that sweet treble tone is the only thing that makes me happy anymore.’”

“Yeah, yeah. Then what?”

“That sweet cadence of chords that you wrote in. And then the chorus.”

“Yeah, about getting shot with cupid’s arrow and girls expecting guys to be freaking chivalrous all the time and expecting courtly love.”

“Yeah, but what can you do?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.”

“Come on Luke. Concentrate,” Jay remarked sarcastically.

“Get over it. We should put an a capella part in this song. What do you think?”

“Sure. What about playing it acoustic?”

“Yeah, that’d probably work.”

“What should we play it at? Allegro? Adagio?”

“Let’s see how it sounds,” Luke said, reaching for his guitar which was sitting on the grass next to him.

Winnie enjoyed hearing the two guys put their song together. They were both cynical of themselves and eachother, but still seemed to enjoy each other’s company. They both had incredible singing voices, almost perfect pitch and the way they used poetic license with their verses made her laugh. They went on to play other songs. Spoofs and parodies of songs, songs with no refrain or definite quatrains, a few songs that sounded more like folk music, songs that didn’t make any sense logically but were still good and one that she particularly liked that they called “Ode to Marilyn Monroe.”

Next she heard a pair of college students talking about prose and different types of poetry, rhyme, and rhyme scheme. Then two older men passed her, talking about the setting and sequence of events in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Another group of people walked by, apparently acting out some sort of story as they went, the narrator had a very loud voice and Winnie could hear him trying to personify the sun from a distance she couldn’t even measure. More people passed, more people talked, and Winnie listened, as she did every day. Every Tuesday here at the park. She laughed at the look a girl got from her friend when she made an interesting analogy between aristocratic theory and potatoes. There was also a group of writers discussing short stories that they’d written.

Through out the day, Winnie also heard people talk about human rights, terrorism, racist points of view, philosophy, theology, salvation and the second coming, Vikings, Worlds Wars I and II, Feminism and gender stereotypes, Celtic culture, the holocaust, decorative arts, folklore, baroque music, graphic arts, abstract art, realism, Protestantism, the plot of the novel that was at the top of the bestseller list at the moment, saturation, Pentecost, Satire, the state of the world, taxation without representation, the progressive party, the Salem witch hunts, the structure of the chapel across the lake, subjective newspaper articles, a vault that was broken into at the community bank, and types of waltzes.

Around the time when she normally left the park, as the sun was setting, Winnie suddenly had a revelation that brought her to tears. She felt overwhelming lonely. She’d never felt lonely, until this very minute. How ironic, the way she’d always felt like she had people, just because she listened to others and felt like she was a part of their lives, when in reality she had no one.. All this dialogue floating in her head all the time. What did she really do with it all? Nothing.