They were trapped for seven days. God's work was able to be done in freedom: the dividing line between earth and sky, earth and ocean, the fecund fields with animals and birds, the oceans teeming with fish and monsters, the two legged animals - human beings - created to carry God's hope.
But the forces of chaos, of tohu and bohu, were chained for those seven days; trapped and kept away from the great work of creation.
There was order at work: chaos was trapped. There was fertility abounding: destruction was stayed. There was ingenuity in creation: blankness was put...
Everyone was on board for the show. They had their fly gear and their hats. I, of course, forgot my sunglasses.
"No problem," mama said, "just squint!"
As we lined up, I squinted at the audience. It never ceased to amaze me that the entire population of a town would stop what it was doing to watch our show every week. But they did. All fifty-four of them, including the dogs.
I was getting antsy. This week, I was the leader! Never before had a child led the show! I wasn't nervous; there's no room for nerves in show-biz. However,...
She opened the fridge and took out a jar of pickles. Rubbing the condensation off her fingers onto her jeans, she prized the lid off and pulled out a spear.
Crunching away, she rifled through the crisper drawer, but didn't find anything appealing. She noticed there was still paint on the back of her hand, but she was too tired to rub it away.
The house was quiet, except for the snoring of her husband, which carried through the house. She was beginning to feel like she heard more from him when he was asleep then when he was awake....
She didn't look at him. She couldn't. "Look at me!" he shouted. She didn't. She couldn't.
She did.
Then she did again.
This went on for several hours.
"Stop looking at me!" he shouted. But she didn't not look at him. She couldn't not.
Then she didn't.
He was always looking at her. It was a condition called Iseezyaz, which causes the poor soul to stare at the person closest to them for all of infinite eternity. "It is perhaps the most unsettling, and boring disease known to mankind," Dr. Jesus Katmandu, discoverer of the disease had said upon the...
Bocci. Bocci ball. Bowling on a lawn. That's what I was doing in that old photo. But strange. Usually you bowl with other people. Usually there's markings on the ground, a target ball to shoot from. In the photo, I'm just standing there in the middle of the lawn, facing the house. My house? God, I don't know whose house that is. It could be a field house, or a club house, and I'm playing bocci, a game I don't know how to play, have never, as far as I'm aware, ever played before in my life, and I'm hunched...
She'd always come running when I called. I could have called her to come get a splinter out of my hand, to help me with my homework, to get me out from the tree in my backyard, or just so I could see her smiling face for hours as we talked. I was so use to this that the idea that some day she wouldn't come running when I called never even crossed my mind. I loved her with every single particle that made up my body.
At this exact moment though the only thought I could think was that...
Time to empty his pockets. Small knife worn ebony handle, three cheap plastic lighters, one engraved silver lighter, crumpled receipts, loose change, reading glasses, two cell phones (one pink). Notebook of newspaper clippings, photos, poems, doodles. He didn't know what to do about it. Recalled the shivery feeling when he looked through it, read the threats within the pages.
Kleptomania could be an interesting condition to have. Usually he was thrilled by his daily haul. Not today. Wondering if his conscience would make him warn the subject of the notebook.
She looks beautiful. Innocent. Unaware..
All I could do was stare down at the text book and pretend that I was listening to the class going on around me. I just wanted to be free again. I flicked between the pages and the past documented in the battered book. I wonder if when those sailors set out that they even thought for a glimmer of a second that their whole adventure would be covered by a short paragraph in a 10th grade history book and a photo that barely even grasped what their lives were like and how tragic that journey was. I knew that...
Creeping up again. That is what I thought as as I woke up in my nice but dull apartment. The life I had made for myself, without you, or her, or anyone really at least not anyone warm and willing...wet. Here i was sure, so sure this time that I had vanquished these feelings these ridiculous needs to share my life, my bed to feel your long fingers reaching in to hold me. Gah, too much whiskey not enough coffee or maybe the other way around. I needed to get up to take care of this go downtown and buy...
Boxes upon boxes upon boxes upon boxes.
Buried beneath more boxes and found deep below
even more boxes. We've built our lives around such
boxes. Filling them with such weighty things, keeping
them around because we're afraid to toss them and
who knows if we'll need their contents again
sometime in the future? We've built castles with these
boxes, making them larger and stronger fortresses
each day, stacking them on top of each other, careful
to not knock anyone else over. I, on the other hand,
don't like to keep boxes. They're too square and uncomfortable.
They remind me of...