There's some competition at a festival I'm going to to get your work displayed there, which would obviously be awesome beyond words. It's pretty open; music, art, writing or whatever is welcome. The theme is 'enchantment/disenchantment'. Can I get some comments on my first attempt? It's kind of mediocre, I didn't spend too long on it, so any tips would be nice. I was trying not to be cliche, but I don't know how well it's turned out.
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It is not the allure of the physical that centred me so firmly within the bonds of my captivation. Though you may fancy me arrogant, I have long since transcended that deplorable base desire for aesthetics, and pride myself upon my complete disinterest in the concupiscent urge for flesh and sweat and limbs fitted together like a child's jigsaw, those unsanitary longings instilled in the reprehensible offspring of the race even as we shift uncomfortably about the technicalities with fidgeting and euphemism.
This is not to say I am entirely naive of human nature; you could not begin to fathom how many hours I have observed the petty waltzes of courtship, a nauseating symphony of tilted hats and pretty blushes strung together with material bribery. And true that I, too, have observed the intricacies of human form within my latest as within my previous subjects. No doting mother or adoring spouse could begin to recall with an equal depth of accuracy the curve of jawline and neck, or the shadow of eyelash against slumbering cheek, or the sharp angle of nose that I have noted and remembered so very closely. I quietly collect him like an entomologist collects a particularly wary specimen, his own dilapidated residence a personal display cabinet.
I do not wish to deceive you into believing that I hold great love for his personality, either. Indeed I know little of it, I have not an ounce of inclination to embark upon a mission to uncover more through the agonising process of trivial social niceties. He lives a quiet existence, a bachelor, though I assure you that this had no impact at all upon my choice. I care not for any future lovers, children or family members of his; I care not even for him. His status in society means nothing to me.
Perhaps then you are wondering why you found me there, the same place that I have returned to for days and months beyond counting. Why, when I freely and truthfully admit that I feel neither attraction nor fondness to him, why when he was such a singularly unremarkable example of a man, a ten-a-penny sort of man, why did I find myself regularly returning to his window? Why could I not pull myself away? I know your questions by now, you ask the same things of me now as you did then, the questions on previous much-lamented objects that remained unanswered at the time. I tell you this under duress; I had not then and nor have I now any sum of rhyme or reason behind it. Your incessant questioning changes nothing; lack of reason was reason enough for me. I would do it again. They were there. That was all I asked.
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