Of Innocence and Pools of Ink

The dark......... It hides. It can distort and make things scarier than they really are, like transforming a coat hung over a chair into a blood chilling monster. Dark is the absence of light and light within literature is commonly contrasted with the dark, symbolizing good and evil, etc. "Adolescence~II" depicts a young girl, "at the edge of darkness," not immersed in, but rather more so interacting with the dark world around her. Her interaction, or debateably her lack thereof, subtley points to a greater signifigance of the nature of her response to the shady aspects of her environment.

At the edge of darkness......

From this line, the reader can be drawn to the logical conclusion that the girl is still oddly separated from the darkness around her. Despite her interaction with the dark, which will be covered later, she is still portrayed as on the edge, like looking into a pool of black, not immersed at the moment, but just as if she is sticking her toe in. It seems that maybe this pool of black is still foreign to her, giving reason to fear jumping in or just not knowing how to interact with it period. The latter manifests itself when dark figures begin to emerge from the background of the bathroom............


The Night Dwellers

Three seal men appear in this dark world and begin to question the young girl. "Can you feel it yet?" They pause only to recieve no response, for the girl does not know what to say, or how to respond. "They chuckle, patting there sleek bodies with their hands. Well maybe next time," they say as," they rise, like glittering pools of ink under moonlight and vanish." It's almost as if they are swimming in the dark. They have become accustomed to it, having, "eyes as round as dinner plates," and, "sleek bodies," that glitter, "like pools of ink," as they rise and vanish back into nothing. They are a sad resemblance of men who have jumped head first into the pool of inky blackness that represents anything from drugs to promiscuous behavior. The seal men are aware of their behavior and have willingly dove head in, but the girl still sits on the edge of darkness and although she does not carry out an in depth interaction with these night dwellers she has a much different interaction with the night.

Punching Holes in Innocence

As they vanish the seal men leave behind holes that ther girl clutches to. This could be the holes left in her innocence. The girl seems to still be young and naive to whatever is happening around her because of her nature of innocence. She does still interact with the dark describing night as resting, "like a ball of fur on my tongue." The interaction seems to be negative leaving her mouth dry and her arms still clutching to those holes. Because of her innocence, she is unable to interact completely in the way that the seal men do to the darkness that is found in the bathroom. Although, it may just be a matter of time, with age, and the persistence of the darkness that her innocence will be picked clean; and she too will swim with sleek body and dinner plate eyes in the pool of inky blackness.