January 2012
5 posts
5 tags
...
“They are just visions”, she says calmly “ only because we have eyes that we see our appearances.” After each sentence she stops for a while and searches for a sign of perception; yet it’s not that easy for others to understand her as much as she does herself.
“Suppose we have eyes but there are no mirrors, no water, nothing to reflect what we look like: then we wouldn’t know if...
8 tags
The Vanishing Act
If a tree falls in a forest, but no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Think about this before you answer. I used to think the answer was simple, but it isn’t. In a sense, I am like that tree. So if a man lives his life, but no one sees him, does he exist?
At some point as I got into middle age, I started feeling an awkwardness take over. I can’t say...
6 tags
Cherise, My Dear Cherise
I like to think that each of us is a secret waiting to be told. And so here’s mine. I have what you might call a penchant for feet. I appreciate other qualities in people, but I am drawn to feet first and foremost. Now, did I know that Cherise would have spectacular feet when I met her? Of course, I...
3 tags
The Pharaoh Downtown
There once lived an architect whose most famous building was a golden pyramid. The Tomb, as The Locals called it, was no ordinary structure. It was massive and covered from tip to base in gold-leaf. A businessman had commissioned it years before. He was famous for his wealth and hired The Architect, who herself was famous fo her bold designs. The...
December 2011
9 posts
9 tags
La Lascivia
For it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque, or with an inward and secret contempt. ≈ Essays of Bacon
The cheerful girl who enjoyed life the most, locked herself into a dark room and threw the keys out of an open window. Watching the miraculous creatures of God all alone was pure unbearable. She didn’t wanted to be a part of the flawless plan, she...
10 tags
the death of the 99%
“For years now, we’ve been doing the same, tired thing. People get old or sick, or they’re born in a terrible place or have an accident, then they die and I go get them. And what do they have to show for their trouble? That’s right. Nothing. Not a dime. Listen, I know you’re all getting sick of it. You’re looking for a new approach. I...
5 tags
the day she died
Kim Maya was dead. She had died on November 13th swallowing a handful of pills she had had found in the bathroom cabinet. And on 14th it was on the newspapers, on the page before the yellow pages, on the left side, written in fonts too small to read, without any details. “Kim Maya has died, the funeral will be held in 23th Street on November 17th by noon.” Funny, the only thing remarkable about...
6 tags
I'm Special
It’s been a long time since I met Vanyo, and I still laugh at the guy’s name. He’s a loser. He was when I met him and he still is. That’s the only thing you can call a guy who works at a carnival. He should own the thing by now, but he doesn’t. He’s just the same old Vanyo, and I’m just the same old me, but being me is better.
The night I met him was when I came up to his stand. I...
9 tags
Same Room
The thing that connected them from the very first was that Diane moved into his bedroom. Not his anymore, of course, since his family had moved out and sold the house, and her family had bought it when they moved. She only knew that it had been his house, and that her bedroom had been his bedroom, because his friend DJ came to the door looking for him. It was at the end of summer, and the house...
6 tags
Dear Potential Dead Person,
Dear Potential Dead Person,
There is life after death. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. It’s not always pretty—I’m going to tell you that right now. But it does exist. Here’s how it happens. One day (or night), you close your eyes in bed with your family around you, or you get blasted to kingdom come by a bullet, or you slip and fall and break your neck in the bathtub, and the old you is no...
8 tags
Oracle
She seemed to meditate over her words before she spoke them. They emerged sonorously, the most mundane words freighted with meaning. “I’d like the duck l’orange,” she would say, and he would hear the deep places of aviary and Gallic history resounding beneath them.
He was never entirely convinced that he knew her. She seemed so simple. She wore too much make-up and the preset buttons on...
5 tags
Nice to See You Again, Brendan
When Brendan came home last week, he noticed that Devorah had a somewhat tense look on her face, which was different than her usual annoyed look. As any good boyfriend would, Brendan worried that he’d done something she didn’t like. Whenever he had done something she didn’t like in the past, it was usually something he didn’t think twice...
November 2011
10 posts
5 tags
Spotlight
Maeve has lost interest in my trick of hanging things on beams of light. To me a beam of light is as solid as a coat rack or a laundry line. It slants into a room and the dust motes spin in it, and I like to take little objects - marbles, bottle tops - and set them on the light, and watch them slide down it and land on the coffee table or the white sofa. Maeve complains because I never pick...
7 tags
Getting My Inner Steve Jobs on in North Korea
Anyway, after walking what seemed like a lot of miles, we found our hotel. They’re called Internationals here, or maybe that’s the chain. Not sure. Let’s just say communication does not flow very freely here.
When we arrived, the escort knocked on what I thought was our room, a little too quietly at first and then way too loud. Finally, a man came out, a...
2 tags
I died last night at 1:53am. I mean, actually, I’m not sure when I died. It could have been when my throat swallowed those pills (1, 2, 3, 4, …) or when my fingers, once clutched so tightly around that translucent orange case, relaxed and eventually, fell open. It could have been then, or when my vision faded out or when my stomach busted open with pain. Or—or, what if I never...
5 tags
Papasan Chair
They were still calling her Sarah, then. It was before she started painting her toenails gold, before she got the three piercings in her left ear, before she developed her taste for gold jewelry and sequined t-shirts. Her brown hair was still long. It was thick and would tangle. She wore knit Norwegian sweaters. She kept this look because it had attracted Tom, back when he was quitting the...
5 tags
Not for You, Little Man
“Not for you, little man. Not for you.” Even muffled by the floor that separated them, Mr. Shea could make out the inflection. It was his own voice coming back at him like an ancient echo. His son couldn’t do much that the other kids his age could, but he sure as hell could mimic. Was it possible? His son was half-parrot.
When he went downstairs, Mr. Shea saw the...
4 tags
A Visit from the Piano Tuner
Mr. Gilbert lifted the front panel off of the piano and revealed the hammers and the tuning pins and the strings. Renata stood by the patio doors and watched him. Without its front panel the piano looked terribly exposed, no longer lush and capable of catching and holding the light from the window, but rawly mechanical. She felt that she was looking at viscera. Mr. Gilbert’s hands were old,...
5 tags
The Saddest Happy Ending Ever
Carson was a writer who made up stories about crazy things, like animals rowing out to catch up with Noah’s Ark. Sometimes, he wrote about men finding tiny lint people in his pockets. These stories were not true—at least not true in any way any of us would usually understand the word—but for the most part, Carson liked them. Sometimes, he even loved them.
Eventually, before he...
6 tags
A Short Discourse on Ambrose Bierce
Professor Bauerschmidt leaned back in his chair and gazed out of the windows as the students came into the seminar room. He rolled a long piece of chalk back and forth between his lips. Paul sat down next to Eudora and watched her go through her pre-class routine. She took three pencils out of her bag and arranged them in a neat row beside her notebook. She took out her water bottle and...
Into the deep.
All too often I dive from the bridge into the depths of the river, head first. Sometimes, I fail to even look before I leap high into the air before falling into the black nothingness below.
The cold water knocks all the air from my lungs and for a moment, it seems like my legs refuse to move. For what is only moment, but feels like minutes, I sink into the dark but suddenly my body comes back to...
17 tags
A Fable of Facebook & Fathers
So, my father died last week. Sounds like the start to a bad joke, I know. But it’s not a joke. The joke is what comes next. Before he died, he got a Facebook account. My dad, though far older than the digital generation, was perfectly suited to social media. He liked the idea of friends more than having the actual thing, and within a year, he...
October 2011
10 posts
5 tags
Love in a Christian College
It was a decision that they made at dinner, under the high florescent lights and almost comically earnest Christian music that played from the speakers in the ceiling. Outside the Ohio sky was gray and slack. Occasional gusts of rain splattered against the windows. Tucker and Bee sat smiling at each other and holding hands. Neither of them had showered recently, and each could smell the dense,...
7 tags
This Just In...
Robert first noticed it while driving to work. He’d been off for a couple weeks, and now, he was stuck in the usual traffic jam trying to get on the 280. Sitting there, he happened to look up at the overpass where a woman was walking her dog until she wasn’t any longer. She dropped to the cement as if she were a wind-up toy...
7 tags
.
You gave me a song. Press play.
And every time I listen to that song, there’s this scenario sprouting out from within my mind. It’s in the arrival corridor of the Heathrow Airport. The immaculate windows seem more like portraits of the airplanes rather than the view to the actual planes beyond it. The airport is empty. It’s only you and me there.You’re staring out the window, and I’m standing...
5 tags
30 Days Til I Get Over You-DAY 8
Little advice from my friends that I think are the cutest couple ever: “In order to get OVER someone, you need to get UNDER somebody else!!” The reaction in my head is “WHAT THE FRENCH…REALLY?!” As much as the truth hurts, their advice is true…but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be doing any Tom, Dick, and Harry anytime soon! I’ll take baby steps...
6 tags
Cottontail, Class Warrior
Don’t start thinking Velveteen Rabbit when you see me. I’m not going to come alive because of a child’s love—that would be ridiculous. If that were possible, do you think I would be here, sitting on a train heading somewhere. I’d tell you where, but what do I know? Until recently, I was Franny’s toy, and we had Thomas—awful and smelly Thomas, how I miss you—who did all the...
7 tags
30 Days Til I Get Over You-DAY 3
Well when you’re experiencing heartache, God, the Universe, Buddha, or whoever you believe in, decides to throw you a wake up call or some kind of revelation. It’s only Day 3 and through the heartache that The Cowboy has done to me, many lemons have been thrown my way…I just don’t know if I want to make lemonade with all of them?!
Day 2 seemed like some blah regular...
5 tags
30 Days Til I Get Over You-DAY 1
It would have been more appropriate to have done this for Lent, but you decided to cut my line yesterday so I guess my 30 day detox from you begins today. Sadly you were my “almost lover” who had taken my heart that I had given so freely with a vulnerability which you never really appreciated and decided to rip into pieces, throwing it straight into the heartbreak city waste and...
7 tags
XT11 FOR SALE - $120 OBO (san jose west) pic
Ad# 1:
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Waterproof: no
Built-in memory: internal solid state
Accepts data cards: microSD™ card (not included)
Instruction manuals included
Need...
7 tags
Drinking Chocolate Milk in a Wine Glass
Now that I’m the “mature” age of 26, I believe it’s appropriate to drink chocolate milk in a wine glass. Yes you read correctly, not a mug or a cup, but a wine glass. Sometimes when life gets in down, you don’t need a fab glass of cab or pinot grio but good old chocolate milk. So as I’m downing my third glass, my mind runs on tangents about life and where the...
My Time Travelling Cousin
Rodney was taking P_____ for a little over a month when the “vacations” started, which isn’t really what they are, but what do we know? Anyway, the last time we saw him, he came by the house in a fake beard and gray long-hair wig, and all he could talk about was ZZ Top. He’s bald, so we understood the wig to a point, but the beard was weird, even for Rodney,...
September 2011
5 posts
5 tags
A Friend for Joseph Thompson
Joseph Thompson loved the weeping willow that grew next to the town pond. He had come across it for the first time as a child walking back from school. He and his mom had just moved to the small town where he would spend the rest of his life, and where he would find out for sure what he’d already sensed about himself: he...
Tiny People
Since getting married, every night, Ben checked his pockets thoroughly. His wife was always getting on him for that; she told him she didn’t like it when he put his pants in the hamper without checking because then she had to rewash all the clothes to get rid of the bits of paper-dust that were everywhere. She hated redoing the laundry even more than she hated doing laundry in the first place,...
The Life & Death of a Story
I live and work in The Library, which you shouldn’t confuse with a neighborhood library because it isn’t—far from it. The library I live and work in is dedicated to preserving all the stories ever told, which is hard to imagine, so think of it as being similar to a butcher’s shop. I know some people are squeamish about eating meat because they don’t like to think about where meat...
5 tags
Children of the River
Every day began the same way for the people of Fayette. At sunrise, all the men, women, and children walked down to the river and looked to see if anyone was waiting for them. Most days, no one was there—just pine trees swaying as the river cascaded past them. But every once in a while, the townspeople, cold and cranky and not well-slept, would collectively hold their breath...
3 tags
The Gift
Sandra placed her hand on the window and looked inside. She loved the mahogany bed, which was placed at the center of the showroom. It was like the one her parents had in their home. Luis was still a couple blocks behind her, talking to their son, no doubt, about the plastic toy banana that the boy had become obsessed with lately. Quickly, she let herself go into the furniture...
August 2011
9 posts
Just Like Him.
“Faith, trust, and pixie dust,” she chuckled as she let the words escape from behind the confinements of her soft caramel colored lips. Her honey brown eyes sparkled as she looked down at the small Minnie Mouse ornament she held in her hand. She’d had it for almost ten years now.
She was nine years old the first time she stepped foot onto the magically grounds of Disney World....
7 tags
Silence
“A gift” is what people called them. And they were—sort of. The composer’s ears were more amazing than anyone else’s who’d ever lived. They could hear notes that no one else could, except of course for the dogs that liked to follow the composer around on his morning walks. It was because of those ears, that the composer wrote the most amazing music anyone had ever heard. ...
3 tags
Suddenly the moon is ahead of us
There is a four door, dark brown sedan I often refer to as Home. I call shotgun because you are the driver. Our destination is simply there away from here.What’s your favorite snack? I’ll pack it and most likely feed it to you as you make left turns. Those are tricky—and so is tracing the whereabouts of Runts. People hate the banana ones, but you are not regular people so I can honestly declare...
Dressed Up For Heartbreak
“I’m on my way,” was the message I read as my heart dropped and I got up off of my bed to get ready. I touched up my eye shadow, eye liner and mascara that I knew would be taken off by my tears later in the night. My turquoise and white striped shirt was fitting around my waist and ran off of my chest in a way that you could see my curves that I hoped would make him want me. My denim shorts showed...
4 tags
A Short Manifesto for the Budding Manifesto...
I don’t do research. I tell my clients that up front. If the young men—they are almost always young men and they seem to love aviator glasses—have something they really want me to include, they have to spell that thing out for me. My job is to provide the words that glue their heady ideals together. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s the first lesson you learn in...
8 tags
Good Girls Finish Last...
Guys are gonna be guys I get. As I sit at this massive party enjoying my ahi tuna and shrimp, my guy friend asks me “Where’s the guy you’ve been dating?” I tell him, “Well he couldn’t make it.” Hmmmmm….this gets the wheels turning in my friend’s head then he responds, “It’s because you’re only a piece of ass to him and...
2 tags
My Plan to Save the World from Balloon-Loving...
Have you ever noticed how many balloons—especially the red ones—float up into the sky, leaving behind crying little kids? Some people say it’s natural, that the little kids’ hands just seem to let go. Those people are wrong. They never ask little kids what happened, which is kind of dumb if you ask me. Children don’t “just” let their balloons...
1 tag
PonyTale
PonyTale
I couldn’t swim deep enough. My ponytail had to stick out above the dark blue squiggly lines turned waves. Like a thumb that throbs, my head stuck out, noticeable. Even at twilight. I couldn’t make you believe I could swim deep enough. Towards the darker black that was the bottom. As we’d race, my mind would pace the ways I could persuade you into believing I made it back so swiftly...
6 tags
Advice from the Candy Store
For a long time, people tried to avoid the candy store on 24th St. No one knew why everyone called it that. No one could remember if the plain, white building with the smoke-glass windows had ever sold a piece of candy or anything else for that matter. But that wasn’t important to the people in town. What did matter were the...
July 2011
11 posts
1 tag
Never Let Go
I can’t be alone with my thoughts, I don’t want to be. There’s just too much going on in my head and the thought of having to face my mess, to confront it? I just can’t bear it.
The years of repressed anger and depression has turned into resentment and its weighing down on me like a tonne of steel. When I ignore this part of me the weight doesn’t disappear but it becomes bearable, like a sore...
1 tag
Teenage Vows
‘You’re my first and my last,’
‘I love you, always and forever.’
Three years later they ended that relationship.
She broke it off with claims that she no longer felt the same way, he brushed the claims off as impulsiveness brought on by the distance between them for he was in a different timezone altogether, half the world away.
‘You’ll get over...