THE way the metal point just glided across the surface, something like a finger tip trailing through water. I think it was like eating good soup -- potato cheese beer soup or something, the comfort food that warms your insides. It was strangely therapeutic in a romantic, wasteful kind of way. Satisfying like brushing the first streak of paint onto a wet canvas. And even though I usually ruin my canvases, I was OK with ruining the cup, this time, because I would make it beautiful slash awesome -- it would just be worthless for consumer use. What? You want a cup of soup to go? Sorry. This cup has been drawn all over. Ruined by the wasteful employee. Made better. But it was fantastic -- the way the molecules just sank under the ink, gave way to the gentle pressure of my lines. What a friendly submission; I don't think the stuff minded, really, that miraculous equation of alteration taking place in my grip. And the Styrofoam -- it was incredible, the way it just obeyed, agreed to being pressed into something different than what it was supposed to be, like a lump of clay. And I thought of a chest, exhaling, collapsing, finally at rest.