I was an optimist. I thought that I, like Hemingway, could weave my influence between countries, live in the welcoming limbo between a government I believed in and one that spoke my language. I stopped trying to return to the United States thirty years ago. I am an airplane steward now. Sometimes I write in imperfect Spanish for a newspaper named after a boat named after a nameless elderly woman half a century dead. I believe every word I write. I am happy.
But the days I spent in the narrow land come back to me every day. They knew...
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...
I had been running for just over an hour, almost breathless. Whose idea was it to train for this marathon anyways? I've always liked running, but never really enjoyed it, you know? There are only so many routes you can take. This time, I decided to say screw the concrete jungle, I'm going to take this somewhere different. So I took to the hills, as they say. Not gonna lie, it was much more interesting than running on pavement. The damp grass under my shoes, the crunching of the twigs, all that good stuff. I stopped at the top of...
Running had always been an expression of freedom. That's how she had always seen it. The wind whipping through her hair, tugging at her clothes as her feet moved so fast that she felt like she was flying. AS though for just that moment, she was soaring above the ground, close enough to the clouds to touch them.
But then she began to notice the strings. The tiny threads, invisible against the light, that were attached to her clothes, hooked into her skin, threaded through to her soul.
When had that happen? When had she become the marionette? The freedom...
He heard two doors smash and with a loud screech and a blinding beam of light, the door to the back opened. He expected the three masked men to open, but found a woman instead. "Is your name Martin?" "Who are you?", he asked. "I'm no one, until you tell me your name." His eyes almost fully adapted to the brightness and he could now see her clearly. She was wearing all black, except for a jeans jacket. She seemed to shiver in the cold, and he couldn't help but notice, that she's kind of cute.
I am in love with a coffee machine. A robot that makes coffee. I am giddy about it my mornings are filled with percolating robot joy. I have placed the coffee robot on the side of the bed that I don't prefer to sleep on.
The girlfriend side of the bed.
The coffee bot is not my girlfriend she is not even a girl. I can not fuck her - she is too damn hot for that. But I don't mind if she watches my touch myself. That seems okay or well not okay okay I mean you know okay...
"Everyday has promise."
"Everyday?"
"Yes, everyday."
"Well it seems that the first day of the year has more promise then the rest."
"I suppose but I will certainly take it as a good sign that you are at leasting embracing the possibility of promise."
"I am sorry for so much, life as usual, for far too long." She looked at him then. It had been so long since she heard something deeper in his words then the surface of day to day. He didn't see her looking of course. His eyes were on the news so she turned back...
The conversation lasted two words.
At least, by the computer's definition of 'word'. That was definitely the source of the bug.
Thou wanted to enjoy his iced latte
Thou wanted to bring the mood down in this joint
Thou wanted these tourists to be gone
Be gone tourists!
Thou forsakes thee!
Tourists
Poseurs
Wanna bees
Beardos
Thou is the grumbly heart of your demise
Thou is real
Really real
So frightening
So fucking real
Thou is not on tourist maps
Pamphlets
Brochures
Thou will burn away all this fake tourist bullshit
Thou will bring the mood down
in
this
joint
The sheep were at pasture and he tried not to disturb them as he jumped over the fence and darted across the field. He had to keep moving, if he stopped they would catch him, if they caught him they would kill him. It was a game, he was the odd one out, he'd been playing along, thought he was include but no, they'd kept him out, always kept him separate so they could use him. When the moment was right, when the moment had come, they had pounced. One had circled around him while the others continued to dance....