[1782] Marco - Chapter IV part 1

[LINK TO TEXT]

Crits: [3319] [69] [2344]

Tags: Phenomenological, experimental, bildungsroman, picaresque

Recap of the previous chapters:

Chapter 1 - The protagonist wakes up in the forest, takes it in, feels it. His reaction to his state of being can reveal to us a thing or two - about him or ourselves. Helped by friendly local, he arrives to Pleasantview, a tiny town in the woods.

Chapter 2 - The protagonist meets Henry in the local store and comes upon a name Marco and a place to live and work - at least for a while. Some things change, evolve, adapt - it's obvious but not prominent.

Chapter 3 - Marco gets a taste of real work and having a man for a boss. Distractions of entertainment emerge and take up some of his focus, demanding him to struggle with and against authority.
This chapter ends on a new day and a recollection of meeting someone new.

Chapter 4 - this one. Things change, much like terrain changes in winter! There's still ground under the ice but that doesn't mean you should wear sandals.
This chapter starts with Marco manning the front counter, as usual.

Essay for the regulars:

You always have to manage expectations, don't you? Sometimes you have to dig deeper when a person you expected to leave one kind of a review leaves something completely different, unsettling - whether positive or negative. You wouldn't wanna buy opera tickets and end up on a nature hike & downriver mountain rafting, right? Or maybe you do enjoy a little surprise from time to time, treat your life like one big gamble. You keep betting on zero because of how stubborn you are and you never realize that your chances to win don't actually go up with every loss. But still, you do not want to chose between black or red - they both seem like evils to you, nevermind which one is lesser.

I hope you remember what happened in earlier chapters, and if not you can just read them again 😀 Just don't tell me you skimmed anything 😁

Here's the confession - we're not looking for critics, none of us are. We're looking for readers. The hyrax chews himself a hole in the mountain, even if it is a small, humble animal. I wanna chew a hole in your brain, in your soul - where a part of me will forever reside, connected through the world of ideas. I'll think of you and you will feel something. Because you now have a memory of what it was like to touch someone else's soul - the rarest kind of intimacy that can only happen between truly loving people or absolute strangers.