Miss or Diss
This game is easy. And it all started at lunch yesterday. We were sitting down in the restricted area. My friend brought up a game.
"Let's play, 'Miss or Diss" She called out.
I was very confused. Miss or Diss? What the heck is this game? My friend must have read my mind, "Clara, It's a game where you pick a person from our school or any character you like and you say it to another person in our group if you want to Diss him/her or you want to Miss -which stands for Marriage, I, sure,...
Her name is Octavia Fabrizi and she is 76-years-old. Born in Florence, Italy, she has lived her entire live on the outskirts of the villa where she and her husband have a small business selling baked goods. Every morning before work, Octavia takes up her bicycle and rides for five miles back and forth It is this exercise, and her love of life, that has kept her alive. Or so Octavia believes. Possibly she is right. It is a question that does not bother her overmuch. She's seen too many, older and younger, pass on to the Otherworld and, thus,...
Deluxe. Platinum. Gold. That is the key to success, she said to the audience, wine glass in hand. Everyone broke our clapping. She smiled, made a short, stunted half-bow and left the stage. She passed through the crowd with elegance and with purpose, deftly sidestepping those stumbling drunkenly about and avoiding any pitfalls into small talk and conversation. They smiled as she passed, vaguely recognizing her, but not exactly sure what her name was. Passing by a waiter, uniform and immaculate amidst it all, she left her wine glass on his tray. It was only a pleasantry, after all. It...
Until now, she'd never thought of herself as pretty. Even this morning, she hadn't really thought of it. A white dress, sure. A veil, sure. Kitten heels, yes. She had told Marjorie that she didn't want her make-up done.
"I've been doing all right for forty years," she said. Marjorie just looked at her and then looked away without saying anything.
Marjorie was pretty. Everyone thought so. It wasn't so much a matter of thinking, even. Empirically, she was attractive. But she wore a lot of make-up.
This morning Marjorie wasn't there. Wasn't there to watch her pull on stockings...
The baker is making a pie.
Why, oh why,
Was I not invited?
You had a big party.
I wasn't invited.
I never am.
It's a dance, this time.
And I'm still not invited.
Why?
I guess it's better to say,
I'm uninvited.
More than enough.
A dapper man bent down and picked up a penny off the cobblestone walkway. A young girl gasped softly as she ducked into a nearby alley. She watched in suspence as the man turned the penny over and over in his hands. That was all the money that her mother had given her for the day and she had been instructed to take it to the baker's shop that afternoon. If she was short by even one penny by the time she reached her shop, she would not have enough to buy any food. The man paused for a moment...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
The warm dirty mist saturates every poor. Across the street relentless construction of new industry raged on erasing the remnants of an older time.
The girl tries to imagine the world as it was, as she has learned in her history books. But now only progress and drives her world. She can not hear or picture the silence or the wildernesses she imagines and longs for. She grows weary of the diminishing magic of the unknown.
The children were not at school. Where were they? Unkown. I am an English teacher at a high school near Houston and, like any other weekday between late August and early June, I was expected a classroom of childen in front on me. Not on this day. The bells rangm yet I heard niothing. I saw nothng. Heck, I didn;t even smell anything! I walked out into the hallway and talked with the other teachers. Nobody had any students in their rooms. I then saw all the princiapls talking with angry words and loud voices. They didn;t seem to know...
I had done this so many times before. I had done this so often that it simply felt mechanical now. Everytime, we would walk up to each other say hello, and sit down in our desks. And ever day I felt powerless to do anything about the ache in my heart. But I did know what was causing the ache. It was caused by the fact that, although we were so close to one another every single day and although we spoke every single day, it never went any further. I wanted him to hold me and to tell me...
It was picture day. Mom took us all to the park. The whole family, I mean. It was her, dad, both sets of grandparents, all 8 great-grandparents, my sister, my brother, his kid, and all our aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and third cousins and their dogs and cats and kindergarten teachers. There were 63,293 of us in all. And mom had us all wear the same thing: blue jeans and red shirts.
We all gathered under the shade of the mighty elm and then the photographer took the picture. She had to take 37 shots to...