Three Hundred and Eighty-Three Seconds
Eoin Connolly
Author Bio
I’m 17 years old and live in Dublin, Ireland. Writing is my passion and has been for as long as I can remember. I like playing chess and writing computer programs in my spare time, as well as thinking about math and playing sports: swimming, running, hockey and football in particular. I read, a lot: fiction and philosophy. My favourite authors include Colum McCann, David Foster-Wallace, Dave Eggers and James Joyce. I started reading philosophy when I picked up a copy of “A Theory of Jutice” in a bookstore five years ago and I’ve gone on to read Nietzsche, Plato, Kant, Machiavelli and Schoppenhauer. I love puppies and other assorted furry little animals.
Description
Eliza Rosenkratz is ageing and insecure and trudging home slowly through a sweaty and electric New York City one summertime afternoon. It’s not long before the everyday perils and ocean of uncertainties fade away into the backdrop and she finds her mind beginning to wander, meandering in and around the transcendent and serene Japanese Gardens of the mind, where each and every well-trodden footpath is triggered by a mundanity, a nothing, an everyday happenstance from the grayscale mediocrity of the reality she finds herself tethered to. She takes a trip through the mystical, sapphire ocean off the coast of Florida and past scalding, white beaches in Virginia, encountering a rotund Arab and slowly coming to terms with the complexities of the human condition on an odyssey that mirrors the one her feet are tracing out on the harsh, unforgiving sidewalk of Manhattan in July. What she realizes about herself and about the very crux of human nature itself is sure to resonate with anybody who’s ever wondered about what the point of it all is; for it’s only when we have to take a long, hard look at what we really want that we discover who we really are.
Book excerpt
It is a peculiar kind of love, because she is certain that she would not be content for the two of them to just be friends. She is not certain that he would not be content with that scenario, though, and the thought bothers her.
She has shoulder length brown hair and is on her way downtown. She is sweaty and tired after a long day of work and she is called Eliza. She is walking through the stifled, electric New York air because she did not feel that she could call for her own cab after declining an offer to share one with a co-worker. She did not think that it would be proper, even though the two have slept together twice now. He thinks he loves her. He has told her so on three separate occasions. She thinks he maybe loves being drunk.
Her apartment is in the Village and her work is in Harlem. It is a long, ridiculous walk to take on such a hot afternoon. She consoles herself with the thought that it is at least not humid.
She hates the heat when the atmosphere is moist, but does not mind it so badly when it feels dry. She has made this known to her co-workers in Harlem more times than she can count. She mainly says it as a filler, a helping of pastrami between two lonely slices of silence. She has decided that, as fillers go, it could be a lot worse, although she will admit that there is room for improvement.
She thinks back, heels clicking on the fragmented pavement, to the time when she went with her family on holiday to Virginia Beach. It was humid and unbearable, although the trip is most notable for the fact that it was there that she lost her virginity. The joke was lost on her at the time. Upon thinking about it now, she realizes that she has never laughed at it since. What was laughable was the incident itself. Sweaty, illegal and clueless, she remembers how seductive and beautiful she felt for all of two minutes. She remembers how unforgiving the solitary light was in how it shone on the white bed and on her white skin; she remembers too how pointless and plain she felt immediately after he had pulled out, and for the rest of the vacation. She remembers trying to exorcise some of that anguish by doing something adult: she propped herself up on one elbow and set her gaze to smoldering, yet tender. She decided that she would trace the index finger of her right hand along a body part she thought was not usually sexy but had decided that she would make sexy. She chose his eyebrow. She traced the index finger of her right hand up and down his left eyebrow. The effect was somewhat diminished by her lack of confidence stemming from the noticeable bulge her stomach made against the starched linen bedsheet. She traced his eyebrow with her index finger for four more circuits until he asked her to stop. He did not say please but he did say thank you.
Author Website
http://www.amazon.com/author/eoinconnolly
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Three Hundred and Eighty-Three Seconds