"Come on, Ben," I pleaded. "Why do you have to do this every time we try to have some family time? You know we hardly ever see each other. It's the holidays, for God's sake."
"There are better ways to celebrate than eating defenseless animals that were cruelly raised and slaughtered on assembly lines," he said firmly.
I snapped. "Oh yeah, Ben, well tell me, just why is it wrong to kill animals? They're not humans, they can't reason like we do. A lot of them are predators too. We need to eat. Why not eat them?"
"Because animals have...
Leaving was not a new idea.
it was a known fact that it was the Best idea.
but leaving.. was Not the easiest.
it wasn't the packing or the finding-a-new-home
or all of the usual headaches-
it was what was being left behind
this not-so-little conundrum has kept me here for exactly three years to the date.
you see..
it was built here, it can't leave here..
literaly, it cannot fit out the door.
saw it in half and take both pieces? ..no
burn it and save the ashes? but it's full!
stay? i guess so..
My best friend is a guy called Peter and he's incredible at talking to people. He has a vault of information in his head that he's gotten from all of his past conversations with people. When he meets someone new he merely tells them what he knows so far about their hometown and then lets them build upon it, this he'll take to the next person he meets from there and so on. I was with him the other day and we were talking to a guy from south africa, we live in australia, and the guy was used to...
The alligator with the cardboard mouth. The whipped cream on the stairs. Hollow clang. Syncopated clatter.
The brighter colors remind me of childhood. Not that adulthood has been faded yellows or softening greys. But a luminescent green or radiant orange triggers my primary nostalgia.
The set is bare. The slice of bread reads 5 in ketchup. A lazy harmonica.
When time runs out here, it starts over there. Follow the alligator king.
The dapper man picked up a penny. He inspected it, rolling it over, back and forth in the palm of his hand. satisfied, he pocketed it and kept walking down the street, a whistle blowing through his thin lips.
He stopped at a newspaper stand and debated over the local or the national paper. He glanced from side to side down the street and asked the man working there if he had anything more adult.
The clerk gave him a knowing nod and reached under the counter. The dapper man pulled at the neck of his suddenly tight shirt. He...
The waves rolled in, and I could hear them crashing along the shoreline. It was a fresh water lake, with rocks that made up the shore.
My eyes were still closed as I lay on the day bed. I was relegated to the front porch, as it "was not appropriate to sleep in the same bedroom."
Such old fashioned thinking makes me giggle. Yet, I follow to impress.
I can feel the sun on my cheek and I don't open my eyes. My legs stretch themselves out, s I was slightly cramped on a space too small to fit my...
Okay, I needed to think. If I went left I would definetly be caught. If I went right, I would also be caught. But if I went straight ahead... I would be an open target. I had no other choice. I looked to the left and to the right, readied myself, and took off. I sprinted as fast as I could acrossc the open field and up the hill to where the man was standing, waiting to collect my information. As I ran, I could hear shouts from behind me but, since the snipers could not recognize me, I was...
The building appeared one day with only a white-haired gentleman who could have noticed. He didn't however, because he was too busy unwrapping a chocolate bar on the wooden bench he sat at every Wednesday. So only the wind grew unsettled with the sight of the 2-storied Japanese pagoda that shot into place in the middle of Central Park with only a sleek "pop" to give away it's sneak-up appearance.
Almost immediately, a black cat jumped from an overhanding willow tree into the window framed with yellow lacquer slats of wood. The man continued to peel away at the silver...
You can count me out, I said. I am not doing it. No. I left this years ago. I have a life now, I told them. No more of this stuff for me- I'm out now.
Of course, they pleaded. They always do. But I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders in movements perfected over the years. Please, please, please! We'll give you anything you want.
Never any creativity, really. It was all the same thing. They were small. They wanted to be big. How did their little prods affect me? They were merely molehills aspiring to be mountains,...
I met my wife in an elevator, stuck between floors. We planned the rest of our lives while we waited for rescue. She wore plaid; me, my typical blue jeans and T-shirt. She was coming from work, me from school. I seem to recall it was something in her eyes. The way they watched me shift, the way they followed the movement of my lips as I explained why I was still single at 30. The deliveryman pretended not to notice us, and we thought that was the funniest thing. He stood under 5 feet tall, and for over 3...