Dear A4: Episode 1

Dear A4,


I can’t take my job anymore.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty good at my job and it’s not as if people at work don’t notice. They say I’m great, talented even. So I’m definitely being recognised, definitely being appreciated.

The thing is, I don’t find it very rewarding. All I do is make copies of stuff. I mean, they’re perfect copies. They’re so perfect you can’t tell them from the original. Some of this stuff isn’t even – in my humble opinion – worth copying. All the ideas, these ‘business proposals’ and ‘marketing plans,’ they all look the same. And that was even before I copied em! I always thought I’d be doing something more...creative, ya know?

But worse of all, and this is the most horrible part, I think I’ve been an unwitting accomplice to crime! I mean, I think I’ve been party to some horrible, horrible things. Fraud definitely, theft of intellectual property…but I think, oh God, I think I might be a murderer!

Those poor reams of paper. Hundreds of them, every day. I tried to stop. At first, I’d jam up every now and again, or fake an ‘out of paper’ message. But then they kept saying what a great copier I was and how they’d never seen any model so fast, so smooth and it just felt so good.

I’m trapped.
They love me and I love that they love me and I can’t stop.
I’m afraid to stop.
I’m afraid that I can’t.
But I don’t want to go on like this.
Every time someone makes another copy and I send another new piece of paper – freshly loaded into the tray, newbies – I die a little inside.

Please help me, A4.
Please tell me what to do.


Sincerely,

Zeerox.

Poetry (the intent, not the product)

Some of you might consider this cheating.

What you’re about to read was written a long time ago – February to be exact – and therefore not ‘new’ in the strictest sense. I didn’t write it for this post. So in addition to cheating, accusations of laziness might now be hurled my way. In fact, after the last post (which was a tag) you might be wondering if The Box should be slapped with a big yellow sticker that says ‘Return To Sender.’

Oh well. Closing arguments over. The jury will decide.

Below is one of the writing exercises I did during at one of the writer’s meetings I go to. All this is transcribed from my notes.


Select your weather.

I chose lightning. Which I’m not sure is actually a weather type as opposed to a weather element, but hey.

Give it a personality.

Lightning is:
A show off - too bright, flaring, in your face
Promiscuous - won't stay in one place
A closet idealist - believes in The One, believes in patterns, in Meant To Be
Suicidal - low self esteem, self-destructive
Needy - You are light. You can outrace anyone. And still you want
people to watch
Afraid - Afraid one day you'll go into the cold black ground and stay there
Defiant - stubborn as FUCK


Now write a poem.

Mine was:

What they don't know
Is lightning is a son
A child
That ran away from home

What they don't know
Is that Zeus never threw him
He ran to the edge of the sky one day
And jumped

What they don't know
Is that he is a million strikes
That never hits the mark

What they don't know
Is that lightning has a twin
A sister