Within sight.
A new future within sight. Fresh hope, fresh starts.
Leaving behind everything we know and everything we hold true and dear, taking a chance on this foreign alien land because we have to. Because we have no othe choice and no other hope.
Who decides rights? Who decides the boy gets an education and the girl gets survival? Without the girl there would be no Decider.
Why does she take the front seat? Why must they lounge inter luxuries of lands which are not theirs?
A family exists elsewhere. Speaking another tongue and wearing a different skin does...
Their trip to the zoo had been postponed due to the rain. She was gutted as it was something she had looked forward to since their arrival roughly five months ago. And it had promised to be such a fine day upon waking: sun without clouds; an average or around 17 degrees, exceptional for winter. Like with so much about the country (and there was rather a lot): it was one long line of broken promises. However, she had learnt early on not to give much credence to the weather forecasts and to trust her own judgement and the colour...
It is surprising how much three tiny candles can illuminate an entire temple.
When I walked in through the main hall to follow the giant flickerings the painted themselves against the soar vaults of the holy place, I could sense the enormity surrounding me. But I could also catch brief sites of the buildings columns, painted windows, and ancient stones stacked centuries ago one atop the other by an as yet unknown process.
I proceeded down the long aisle where many large processionals had many years gone by had passed on their way to making some offering or another to...
swallowed by the water flowers at last
the canoe breathed across the swamp
I found the roots of an ancient oak
felled by Paul Bunyan
shed on by the ox
and dove,
a dove falling into the light,
to the tree's top,
waving in the murky green,
strange fish like oxen
strange waters
strange trees
the dove and the ancient oak
These three peasants are gathered round a plough, drinking ale and sharing a small knob of cheese between themselves. It's a sunny day in Northumbria and the midday sun makes it hard to work, so these guys are taking a break. The ale is cheap and the cheese is rotten.
"You see the sunset last night?" asks one.
"Yes. It was beautiful." agrees a second. The third peasant doesn't speak. He just stares lengthways down the field.
"See that cow?" he finally interrupts. "Rumour is that it's magic." The others are intrigued now and stare down the field at the...
"Well shit, that didn't work," the conductor said.
He walked around the wreckage, pulling out passengers. Women, mostly. The men waved off his advances.
One gloriously attired woman emerged from a smoldering welt of torn metal as though she were departing at Poughkeepsie. Nary a scratch or displaced hat-feather.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on," the conductor thought. What he said was, "Ma'am."
The day was still high above them, children kicking rocks along the tracks. The conductor scratched under his hat and wondered, well what the hell now?
A man sitting in the...
The winter of 1970 in the Bay Area was not something I ever expected to experience- especially since I was born in 1990. My folks scolded me every night for sneaking into the backyard whenever there was a full moon. It wasn't my fault: grandpa planted the story about the time-well in my head and it sprouted into a maddening obsession.
My hair was now curly instead of wavy and my hands reverted into the pudgy state of toddlerhood. Who was I, in this time, and why was I only a spectator? My new parents talked about the lunar landing...
"Even in a finite universe, a rock doesn't keep being a rock. Things are always disintegrating and becoming other things." Our Tragic Universe, Scarlett Thomas
There was once a rock, a very old rock, a rock which had laid low for a very long time. It couldn't remember how long that long time actually was but somehow knew without needing to remember that that long time was long enough. It was a rock that took great pride in its appearance, habitually watering its neat lawn of grass, combing its thick coat of moss, trimming it at least once a week....
It was becoming night. Quickly, stealthly, Navy SEALS approached a haunting compound. Sand-surrounded, barbed-wire covered; its contents unkown, its inhabitants, suspected. This was do-or-die time. The code "Geronimo" was on everyone's minds. This desert, this foreign country, was their home for the past year. Now they had Presidential orders, "capture or kill," "wanted, dead or alive." It wasn't just read off of an old saloon poster. This was it. With intelligence officials watching, and waiting, the world went about its business, until five hours later, when everyone got word of the actions that occurred inside that haunted-looking building. A terror-leader...
Wow. The Statue of Liberty. I've lived in New York my whole life, and have personally seen it one time, and it's on my I heart NY credit card, of course. I played the Statue of Liberty once in a 5th grade play about America. I was "Miss Libby" and I sang about inflation. "The Red White and Blues" my song was called. I was 11. I wasn't a very great singer, but my teacher had great faith in me, as did my mother. There's a VHS tape of it somewhere, I do know that. Only once, though, have I...