December 2011
31 posts
December 30, 2011
When I was very young I heard a song on the radio. I remembered the lyrics and the melody of the song’s chorus very clearly, as well as the name of the band, which was and remains a very famous band. I have never heard that song since, nor been able to track down any reference to its existence anywhere in this worldwide, hypertextually interconnected web of knowledge and documentation in...
December 29, 2011
This meal was unlike any we had ever had. We looked around the table, blinking groggily at each other - how had we come here? Who brought us? Where were we? - and before we could begin to give voice to our questions, the courses started coming out: rabbit bone paste with candied periwinkle; crab shells stuffed with sweetbreads; a salad of banana leaves and roasted kelp topped with crispy skin (we...
December 28, 2011
I drive by your house every week or so. I’m not even sure whether you still live there, but whoever it is seems like they’re doing well. There’s usually a couple cars parked there - nothing fancy, but relatively new, in good condition. When I go by in the evening it always looks really cozy, the curtains drawn with nice low lights behind them. I can almost smell some delicious...
December 27, 2011
It’s been years since we last saw each other, but we’ve played online Scrabble together so consistently that I can tell when something is going on in his life. I knew something was up long before he told me about his first divorce just from the infrequency (and, frankly, sloppiness) of his moves. I don’t think he beat me again until he met Denise, poor thing. But I’ve never...
December 26, 2011
What does your arm say to you when no one else is around? When the day is done and you’re changing out of your work clothes, and your arm is awoken and realizes it has you all to itself at last, what does it say? Does it tell you its secrets? Complain about being smothered under your sleeve all day? Confess its deep, unrequited affection for your ribcage? Or does it merely yawn expansively...
December 25, 2011
This day has meaning for us. We have no gods, or rituals, or faiths. There is not much that we believe in, but we believe in love and in each other and in the pleasure of a day spent drinking cocoa on the couch. We believe in looking each other in the eye and saying “Thank you.”
So we have this day that we’ve observed for our whole lives, and it may not mean to us what it means...
December 24, 2011
The store wasn’t open yet, but I could see out the window from my register, see the buzzing mass of humanity, faces pressed up against the glass - fogging it over, wiping it off, pressing, breathing, fogging again. There was nothing they could do to make the clock move any faster, or the store open any earlier, but still they gazed and fogged and wiped. We looked out at them and then at each...
December 23, 2011
Randall stared at Mrs. Portraine as she addressed the chalkboard. He was troubled. In his left hand he flexed a rubber band around his fingers. In his right hand, slick with his nervous sweat, he held an acorn he’d picked up at lunch. He knew that he could combine these two items and Mrs. Portraine’s ass in a way that would make him a legend for weeks. He also knew that Light in August...
December 23, 2011
We could see our breath, but it wasn’t cold. We weren’t cold. Our bodies were comfortably warm - some of us had taken off our sweaters or rolled up our sleeves - and our hands hung loosely by our sides, not clenched in pockets or rubbed in front of our mouths and blown into. And yet we looked at each other and saw the breath rising from our mouths, distinct puffs coming with each word...
December 21, 2011
I woke up, pushed myself out of bed, attempted to stand, and fell on my face. I looked down at my legs, and they appeared to stop at the ankle, where once they had flared out and formed feet. I couldn’t see what they looked like at the ends, but it seemed clear my feet were gone.
I tried to think. I was certain that I had gone to sleep with feet; where could they be now? And then I knew. I...
December 20, 2011
Our boat was not built for a journey of this distance or harshness, but it’s the boat we have, and the journey we must take. There were too many of us for this boat when we started, but now we are fewer; we curse the loss with one breath while we say thanks for fewer mouths to feed and bodies to cramp our quarters with the next. They were us, but they are gone. We have seen land many times,...
December 19, 2011
I admit it: When your job is to stand on a stage in the shape of your name every night, strutting and shouting and pointing with unflagging intensity, worshiped by sex-crazed, screaming hordes, your perception of reality can become somewhat skewed. I recently drove myself to the mall to buy some underwear, as my old underwear were all used up. I was shocked at how few people noticed me, until a...
December 18, 2011
The girls at camp all hated me, but I didn’t care. I was dirty, I smelled bad, I had no discernible conversation skills, and my father was the humorless, fascistic camp director whose main goal in life seemed to be to make everyone else’s life miserable. Now that I think about it, all the kids at camp hated me, boys included. But I still didn’t care, because the counselors sucked...
December 17, 2011
John-bear’s friend Henry was a beekeeper. He started small, with one hive and a few hundred bees, but he quickly became known to the bees as a good, honest guy, and their numbers grew rapidly. Within a few years, the bulk of Henry’s real estate was devoted either to bee hives or to the clover they loved so much, and Henry seemed to spend every waking moment on those bees. John-bear...
December 16, 2011
There were two times in her life that Lily always pictured when she was faced with the fear that she would die violently and soon - a fear that seized her all too often as she responded to customer e-mails in her cubicle. First was learning to ride a bike, her father releasing her shoulders to let her wobble down the road on her own. The second, which hadn’t happened yet, was her...
December 15, 2011
I smiled at the couple across from me, late in middle age and tired, their bodies swaying with the rock of the subway car. She looked at me and returned my smile with a pained expression, holding her husband’s hand tight.
“My mother died today,” she said, tears welling in her eyes as they met mine dead on, “and it’s not all right.”
There was nothing I could...
December 14, 2011
Tim couldn’t imagine why his grandfather had bequeathed him the gargantuan clock (“your grandfather’s grandfather clock,” his father had mused, imagining he’d said something humorous). He had no use for it - who would these days? - and no interest in it, and certainly no room for it. Had Pappy noticed that Tim was a grasshopper? He could barely see up to the face of...
December 13, 2011
It’s not difficult to project an air of confidence and knowing authority even when your eyes are closed and you’re basically asleep, losing all focus on your surroundings. The main thing is to train yourself to nod sagely at the sound of speech even when unconscious, and to interject with occasional sounds that might indicate incredulity, agreement, or exasperation. It also helps to...
December 12, 2011
Imagine what that poor baby must have gone through: first her mother, perhaps maddened by pepper, callously hands her off to an absolute stranger; then, squirming in her new sitter’s arms, she finds herself transforming into some porcine grotesque, unable to communicate her discomfort due to the fact that she is an infant, never mind the fact that she has become a pig. And then, to add...
December 11, 2011
Bill had every reason to be upset. The girl had been trouble since the moment she’d come into his life, kicking him up out of that house that wasn’t even hers in front of everybody, when he was just following orders. And now she’d taken his pencil and tried to confuse him in the juror’s box - fulfilling his civic duty, for god’s sake! As far as he was concerned it was...
December 10, 2011
The clock stopped and we never noticed, even as we checked it every few minutes and thought “yep, we’ve got plenty of time.” If he had never shown up and shocked us into awareness would we be there still, growing hungry and restless, ignoring the setting sun, thinking this was just the most wonderful, relaxed morning ever? When would we have noticed something was awry, or would our craving...
December 9, 2011
I drink milk every day. My mother always told me it was good for me - and my father too; they both preached fervently on the topic of milk’s many wondrous properties - and it seems the lesson stuck. I’m just not quite sure what kind of milk it is - or, specifically, what animal it comes from.
Each morning fresh milk appears in my fridge in an unmarked glass container. It’s...
December 8, 2011
Tiger meat is a rare delicacy for most, but it was all we had. Each month the tigers walked into our village and exposed their throats. We had little else to subsist on - no grains, no livestock, few vegetables - but we ate tiger until we could swear our skins were striped. When some of us moved to other villages we yawned at their tales of tiger encounters, but gawked at their chickens and yams...
December 7, 2011
When the word came, when they told us this was it, we all stopped what we were doing, whatever it was we were doing. We took a moment and considered whether we wanted what we were doing to be not only the last thing we did, but the thing we did as the earth breathed its last and the human race was extinguished. To a man, the answer was no. We scrambled to find something else to do and wondered why...
December 6, 2011
If he stayed still and was totally silent, not necessarily holding his breath but exhaling slowly and evenly, Seth could hear the clock. It was an electric clock, which he would have assumed would be completely silent - unlike the geared beasts he’d grown up around, with their ticking and scraping and bonging - but it was a machine like any other, and its hands and motor made some sound,...
December 5, 2011
The little stuffed hippo sat where it always had, its minimal fur long since loved away, a black thread smile gracing its face, and the string collar it had been given so long ago tied around its neck. It must have sat there for years, but today was the first time in ages that Sarah had looked at the hippo, studied its plastic eyes, and tried to remember tying that collar on as a girl. She held it...
December 4, 2011
Ted was hungry, there was no point in denying that. It had been over four hours since his last meal, and he hadn’t snacked at all. He wasn’t starving or anything, but he was hungry and as he looked around him he saw nothing that might put an end to that situation. Once the thought crossed his mind - “I’m hungry” - it wouldn’t leave until he did something about...
December 3, 2011
We are the dancers. We dance. We will show up some time, without any warning, and we will dance. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing - you might be playing music, you might be baking a pie or knitting a scarf - we will find the rhythm, we will find the 1, and we will dance our asses off, throw our hands in the air, jump up and down like maniacs. You will try to dismiss us, you’ll...
December 2, 2011
Dobermans have fallen under the radar lately - after a strong showing as the vicious dog du jour in the 80s, including many action/comedy/action-comedy movies made all the more actiony/comical via the inclusion of dobermans - but don’t let that fool you. They will still totally rip the shit out of your ass given half a chance. My grandmother has two dobermans that we’ve all known since...
December 1, 2011
Everyone was angry because we were out of meat. “You’re a deli,” they said. “What kind of deli has no meat?”
We told them it was temporary; we promised it would be fixed soon; we offered them cheeses and pickles and hard boiled eggs.
“We don’t want your pickles. Your hard boiled eggs have been sitting in that jar for years. We’ll have a little...
November 30, 2011
Will I write a song for you while you’re still alive? Will I write a happy song to sing to you while you can hear it, a song of love and joy and graceful thanks? Will I sing of games and books and friends and many meals, and not of leaving when you needed me, running away with a smile and a shrug? Will I sing thank yous instead of sorrys? I would like to sing for you, sing happy and gracious...