Opium Dreams

The first time is always the hardest, you think of it, it's appalling, it's repulsive, it's inhumane, to say the least, and you leave it at that, but only for sometime of-course, because you're curious, and let me just say that curiosity is at its core very primordially humane, our curiosity defines us, in a way it is the very essence of '' human'', and for being curious you can never be blamed, never, period! But curiosity is a very dangerous toy to play with, once you lose control you lose it once and for all, and it is this very curiosity that I am so vividly defending that will take you down the deepest pit if not mastered, which brings us back to the first line: because you're curious, you approach, you have to know, WHAT IS THIS? it eats you up from the inside, and you start feeling it, playing with it a bit from a safe distance, and you come close little by little, and you touch it, it is new and exciting, you can not take your hand off

Dakota took a long sip of her lemon honey tea, one teaspoon of sugar, and looked at the white page on the desk in front of her. She had some keywords scattered here and there, but nothing substantial. Ideas came scarcely and order was lacking, disjointed words that so stubbornly refused to draw a picture. She had a white shirt with black buttons, and she wore pearl earrings that went perfectly with her smile. She peered into her page through thick glasses, as if this layer of glass gave her a sense of security and protection. She had a round, friendly face with a small flat nose, and her black eyeballs were carefully placed on an extremely white sclera.    At this point, except for words scattered here and there, she had one line written on her page that held any promise: "Their graves were marked with pale stones, no names, no dates"  She did not make any progress on this idea for a couple of months now. It started from a newspaper story she read about a fa