The Pharmacy(TM)

I guessed that the cafe we entered was relatively new. Although brimming with the usual scents of a very "Starbucks" variety, there was still that faint, almost undetectable, smell of new paint that wafted around. The chairs and tables were still very polished, and the barristas and cashiers still wore sincere smiles on their faces as they took customer orders.

My friend and I looked around to check the other patrons of the cafe–which at first glance seemed were mostly young college (perhaps high school) girls. I considered myself pretty much a novice when it came to book signings, this being the first one I had ever attended. However, be that as it may, my abject curiosity was getting the better of my stage fright (the "novelty effect" as my friend calls it). I happily found an empty nook for me and my friend, and sat comfortably, continuing to survey the surroundings, while my friend readied his books for the signing.

"Makes me wonder exactly how does someone write himself into stardom?" I said, not a little too loud, turning a few (young and pretty) heads in our direction. I suddenly realised how most of the young women around us were near copies of each other–mostly in black, with heavy mascara, some silver or bronze jewelry (usually an egyptian ankh or peace sign) and black nail polish. Their dark fashion contrasted sharply with their pleasant smiles and bubbly demeanor, although there were one or two who seemed brooding enough to be considered genuinely "evil". Not a few of them seemed to be sizing us up, their darkened eyes appraising us teasingly, as if asking the question: are you one of us? or dinner?

Pretending to be oblivious to the sudden attention I just caused, I turned to my friend, who was digging through his backpack.

"Where the damn pen? I always bring one and I don’t believe I’d forget it at a time like this."

"Well, unless it’s a nice pen or a lucky one, I’m sure the author’s going to come equipped with lots of his own. He does this for a living, you know."

My friend nodded and proceded to straighten his copies of "Puddles in Starlight", "Anagram", and "Second Chapter" the latest three bestsellers of this famous American author. "Actually you’re right," he suddenly said.

"About what?"

"Lucky pens. The author’s got a lot of those. I’m just fan buying into the fluff of his writing for personal reasons, but a diehard literary critic would cringe at the thought that what makes a bestselling writer, or simply a writer, is more a lucky set of circumstances than any skill."

My friend was talking louder than I was, and I started to notice that we had attracted a temporary audience beside us–some bored college girls waiting for their idol to arrive to sign their literary treasures.

"Similar to uber-attractive fashion models or uber-talented athletes? Not so much training as they are genetic freaks of nature?"

"Something like that. Did you know that in France, sometime after the end of World War I, some depressed poets got together and performed a little surrealist experiment. They’d hand slips of paper to each other, write down fragments of sentences, then string them together to see what they would find. The structure they followed was adjective-noun-verb-adjective-noun. They did this and published their work, and from that random collection they came up with a poetic statement: Les cadavres exquis boiront le vin nouveau."

"The… exquisite cadavers shall… drink the new wine?"

"Good french."

"That’s bizarre."

My friend took out a small piece of paper. "I tried a similar experiment just for fun using a spreadsheet. I got twenty nouns, twenty verbs, and twenty adjectives. Using the same structure the french used should give me about three million two hundred thousand permutations. You’ll be shocked at how the results actually make some sense–or nonsense." He was sounding pretty obsessed.

I started looking at my friend a bit worriedly. "Just for fun eh? I hope you’re not suffering from any depression yourself man." I read his paper:

The fine sister shall assume the virtuous tree
The sorry man shall repel the excellent ancestor
The naughty liquor shall unseat the corrupt vehicle
The sorry descendant shall acquire the upright parent

Crap mostly.

The wayward soil shall condemn the excellent tree

That was actually good.

The corrupt sister shall acquire the fine parent
The wicked child shall transform the excellent sky
The disobedient soil shall collect the evil man

The last one was cool.

The hesitant sun shall acquire the virtuous descendant
The evil sister shall assume the mischievous man

This was getting disturbing.

The superior soil shall transform the superior clothing
The hesitant vehicle shall travel the upright liquor
The virtuous child shall mimic the naughty ocean

That last one… whoah.

The wayward sky shall mimic the excellent vehicle
The corrupt sky shall cherish the moral sun

That second one hit right home.

The sorry book shall value the worthy star
The hesitant cup shall value the penitent soil
The excellent liquor shall summon the naughty world
The virtuous descendant shall acquire the worthy star
The hesitant man shall mimic the hesitant woman

Unbelievable, especially the last one.

I looked back to see my friend gone from my side and quickly found him on the opposite corner chatting with one of the hot gothic girls–one of the "evil" ones. I shook my head slowly and smiled. If life, like good poetry, was truly random, then I guess it doesn’t hurt to push one’s luck whenever the opportunity arose.

<End of Part 2>