Game Seven

Pa never drinks. But when the Lakers went up on the Celtics in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, he was on the verge. I could tell. His friends were all screaming and shouting every time the ball moved, and then the game was over and his beloved Celtics, the Celtics he had once skipped school to see, had lost. For the first time, I saw resignation in Pa’s eyes, and he cracked open a cold one. The first swig went down slow like a tear from a lesser man. My shock was soon overcome by the commiseration we shared.

The Hill Where The Bobcat Waits

In the bushes on the crown of the hill, that’s where her grandmother told her the family treasure was. She went alone, barely tall enough to see through the grasses. Towards the top a wet wind came up; the blue sun did not warm her.

She crawled beneath a tangle of thorny weeds. A low hiss sounded, and a branch caught her hair. A movement. The thicket held her in place, and suddenly there before her was a bobcat. She trembled, for her grandmother had not warned her.

“Please don’t come.” The bobcat approached her with its slant eyes unblinking.

Where Have We Diverged

He came into his brother’s cabin with his mind full,
top-heavy as
a ship with its crew
all in the rigging.
It wasn’t until late that night, after talk
of parents
of friends
of stories
that his own ideas started to cry out for release. He spoke slower then,
as if his words could be grenades
and his brother,
sensing war,
would begin to dig trenches.
They were different people, with different outlooks.
So his silences spoke
where his words might go.
His silences stumbled,
he felt them lame
and his brain ran away.
They talked together all night.

Lucky And Unlucky

The sidewalk is a trampoline. The sidewalk is a snake. The sidewalk bounces us along, eats us up, and whistles. We are Mexican jumping beans. We are snake eyes. We are lucky and unlucky and we always get to roll again. The bus driver said hello when I got on board but let me off without a second glance. This city hurts me. It deserts me and it inspires me. The alcoholics are the good guys and the cops are evil, though I’m told it’s sometimes the other way around. What to do next? Where to go? Who really knows?

Mr. Todd And The Kids

Every month or so Mr. Todd would stop class in the middle. “You know,” he would say, “I don’t have the mind for Rousseau right now. It’s time for a break. Can’t keep grinding the mind away day after day.”
The kids, those that were awake, agreed. They started getting antsy.
When this happened Mr. Todd never had a plan, he just knew he couldn’t possibly be bothered to think any more. “We’ll try again tomorrow or next week,” he would say.
By then the kids would be wide awake, whispering to each other and imagining the sunny day outside.

Invocation

Sirens made Carlton think of Kelsey. He could barely hear any noise from the forty-ninth story, but how the red and blue ran up the walls up towards his empty window made him remember how she scraped her knee in Germany.

Kelsey was off in New York. She thought of Carlton only when bookmobiles passed or when she whiffed glazed donuts. Then she’d get all longing for him and think of the time they accidentally danced when they weren’t even supposed to.

Oh miracle of something!
Whatever you are,
Please,
Bring us back together!
We are lonely
In our apartments!

Sounds Like A Migraine, But We'd Best Have An MRI

A numbness started in my fingertips and spread into my hand. Soon the right half of my lips had the same sensation, and I could feel it move slowly back into my gums and then around onto my tongue.

Later, at dinner, my eyebrows started hurting and when I tried to tell a story, I couldn’t remember what the right words were. I said “shark” instead of “water” and “boat” instead of “squid”.

A line of bright crosshatch later appeared in my right eye. My mind functioned, and I found it absurd and fearful that I should remain observant throughout.

Why Licensed to Ill Might Be the Best Rap Album Ever

The facts: it’s by the Beastie Boys, 3 middle class Brooklyn Jews, and it’s the biggest-selling rap album of the 80’s.

It shows the value of not giving a fuck. They don’t care about conveying an image they aren’t. They rap about what they know about - White Castle burgers, porno mags, bein’ hated and confront-ated, and the right to party. You won’t find them faking it in a single line. Their beats are the same way, original stuff made out of whatever sounded good at the time - rock music samples and their voices and blaring bass and xylophones.

Amelia

I’ve been living with this lady, Amelia, in Spain for the past quarter. She cooks all of my food. Her Spanish rice is beyond words so I won’t try. She’s lived in the same neighborhood her whole life but she’s travelled all over Spain. She has a sharp sense of humor that I love. One day I got home from school and she had organized absolutely everything in my room, including safely stowing away my condoms in my retainer case. She’d rather wait for a bus than walk 3 blocks. She thinks she’s too old to travel but she isn’t.

The Music

38.7 days.

That’s the length of my music library, start to finish.

I can show you the winding canals of indie rock. I’ll take you on a tour of hip-hop from its scrappy beginnings to stuff that doesn’t come out until next month. We’ll put on some electronic and pump the bass until your heart beat matches the music. I’ll show you the 60’s without ever opening a history book.

If it’s rainy, I have music for that. If you’re having a barbeque, I have music for that. If you’re tired of listening to music, I have music for that.

Vices

She knew that after this moment, she would never feel the same ever again. And it wasn’t because of the sex or the booze or the assortment of technicolor pills scattered on her coffee-stained coffee table. Or maybe this was everything. What was this “cleaning up” thing supposed to do anyway? She didn’t believe that it was even possible to be quote-unquote clean this day in age. Well, what it came down to is that her future husband-to-be did believe it was possible, and not in this moment, but after—that was what was important.

She snorted a line.

“You’d make a good lawyer.”

“You’d make a good lawyer.”

The only people who ever tell me that a) are older than me and b) have just lost an argument with me.

You say it like I’m a kid: “It’s remarkable that you construct effective arguments on the fly. You could do something with that someday.” Listen bitch, I know. What you’re really saying is you’d pay me hundreds of dollars an hour to do what comes naturally to me. And that I just reasoned you into a corner where the most constructive thing you could say is a backhanded compliment unrelated to the topic at hand.

Portland's Architect

His studio is scattered with brightly colored drawings of bridges and buildings. The proportions aren’t always quite right, and though he’s entered many architectural competitions, none of his ideas have been made into a physical reality. He does it because he loves it. All his buildings are covered in solar panels and all his bridges have parks built into them. His head is full of ideas, and for each idea he has had there is a sketch or a miniature model lying somewhere in the studio. Though he knows no building contractors, in his studio Portland grows bright and green.

Abandoned Bandit

She was probably a bandit lying in abandonment beneath the highway’s shoulder. Her hair filled with grass and a bent knife held in her left hand. We watched her in fascination as she rolled over to smudge her other cheek with tar-stained gravel.

She would not look at us. Scouring her pockets, we found nothing. Ants crawled from the tops of her torn boots and she held her hair across her eyes.

We left her there a monument to the highways crossing our great nation, another piece of trash discarded and dirtied on the smoothed route from here to destination.

Slumped Shoulders

He was a tall man, heart full of plum pits. Under his jacket was a worn collared shirt, and under that a yellowed tank top. His shoes were new but his shoulders were slumped.
At the supermarket, he read each label entirely before setting something in his basket. The checkout lady knew him. “Would you like a bag for your labels sir?” The joke passed him. Later in the car he would think about it.
His path unfolded through stop signs and crosswalks. He thought of dive-bombers as he drove. Each hour his watch beeped from inside the glove box.

Yell

I stand in the darkness where two shadows cross and begin to yell. My voice grows hoarser as my yell drags out, but I do not run out of breath. For minutes the gravel depths flow out of me and into the night. My knees feel weak and my head floats off into lightness. The pigeons grow accustomed to the noise and peak over the gutters high above. Hours pass and the streetlights are replaced by sunlight; still the yell comes. My ears become numb. My whole being is wrapped into that yell, until finally it fades into a groan.

Things That Seem Profound At The Moment

When we imagine stories, we don’t seek to find examples for truths we believe in, but create instead our own mini-truths.

Since the entire truth would encompass everything everywhere, our search for the truth is futile; instead we approach the truth by expanding our minds.

The truth lurks everywhere. Even in experiencing things that are false we might grow in our comprehension of the truth.

My leg itches.

We’re naturally communicative. When we have an idea that opens our perception to new channels of thinking, we feel we must either tell someone else or write it down for later.

Heavenly Duties

The priest skipped his tea and evening hour of reading. He went straight towards his straw-filled bed, where he collapsed without a sound. The day had sucked the vigor out of him. In the morning he had spoken of helicopters at mass. After, while the people rearranged the chapel for a wedding he was to perform that evening, he had been summoned by a whisper to a house on the periphery of town, where a dying woman talked to him as if she had never talked to a human before. After, at the wedding the applause lasted for several minutes.

No Food Or Drink In The Library

The librarian came in furious and snatched the student’s half-eaten banana.

“I’ve told you and your whole class! No food! No water!” The student stood, and the librarian jabbed his forefinger into his chest. “Leave this library! I will not have you making a mess!”

The student said quietly, “Please don’t touch me.” Five days in the library had worn his mind and patience down.

The librarian shoved him towards the door, and the student grabbed him by the front of his shirt. He held the smaller man up against a wall. “Don’t try to tell me what to do.”

Talking

“I’m craving something that tastes so good it could have won a blue ribbon.”
“Watch your step.”
“The set-up seems intuitive, but I can’t seem to figure out what to do next.”
“The other day I saw a plane do an emergency landing in a field.”
“Where do you find these?”
“It reminds me of what Lucy said in the Wizard of Oz.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Certainly.”
“How about Nancy Pelosi? Or Donald Duck?”
“Or how about this, we split it half and half.”
“I saw you walk by the other day.”
“That hairpiece looks so great on you!”