5.31

Late today to a wedding. We drove at illegal speeds, only to get there to find our experience sullied by a priest. I didn't drive all this way to see a married couple.

5.26

I don't suppose you've heard of the Trice Twins? Yeah, I didn't think so. They're not very big outside of their fandom. Mostly Atlanta, actually. Oh? I saw then premiere at a club you probably haven't heard of called The Point 9.5? Anyway, they opened for Quince Pies, which is a trash band; they actually bring trash they've never seen before on the stage and make music with it. It's pretty progressive. The Twins opened and anyway, I don't think they were very good. Pretty crap, honestly. I guess that's why nobody has ever heard of them.

5.17

I'm in the ninety-fifth percentile, which makes me feel pretty good about myself. I'll really smart! And then I remember that one in twenty people is smarter than I am, and not just in general: at the very thing I'm the best at (standardized testing).

One in twenty.
I'm really average.

5.15

Today is a day of l'esprit de l'escalier, yet I haven't seen a single staircase.  I want to call him and explain all the things I missed, but I need to learn how to leave well enough alone. I must. Or I'll find myself carrying the stairwell with me wherever I go.

5.13

I tried today to think of portrayals of Good in literature and all I could think of was Paradise Lost and Monty Python's flying circus. Hours later, I tried again and only thought of Pullman's His Dark Materials.
What's wrong with me? Am I losing my edge? Am I gripping the wrong facts? Am I already old?

5.10

1P 5:13
She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends her greetings.

She tied the veil back so it wouldn't blow, so her features could never be made out through the oblique light glancing through gauze and knotwork. She had a strong nose and dark, wide-set eyes—an anomaly in the city. Anyone could pick her from a crowd or describe her after the barest moment of contact. She was different in an easily communicable way.
Perhaps she was in the wrong profession.
She forced her feet to slow, steady beats to counter the erratic staccato of her heart. She was closing, of course, on general notoriety. She couldn't work for more than a few months in any part of this sprawling metropolis without becoming something of a popular secret, and here was no different. But today was the last risk. Two men were coming that evening—men she had never met—who would move her home and belongings entirely, clean out the building as if she hadn't really been there at all. Today was her last job. As she neared the valley, the sound of the forum broke up the hill to her. She felt of course nervous, because she had only last year survived the Hunter's blade in a forum. But for all other assassins, at least, the forum was as good as a wall.
She slipped past a man selling dates and figs, past a woman who pushed a dove at her, past a man who spits as he yells, and past every other kook salesman trying to peddle their wares. There: the carpet salesman. They recited for a few minutes about the quality of the rug, the feel on the foot, the strength of the fibers, and the garbage that people talk about when they have time to spend on life. She had no time. She itched. The sweat that broke out under her veil had begun to stick and peel the fabric to her skin. Finally, he offered her a price and she played her part. She, outraged, recoiled at the absurd price and he, desperate, begged for the sale. They both knew what the other would say, but they spoke with conviction born from somewhere far from the carpet. She paid him the generous sum she had never earned and took the carpet that had been rolled around letters from those chosen of the Lord whose words were swords held to the throat of those who would not believe. She carried her fake purchase away to the underground church where men were waiting to make a copy of the Apostles words.
The Woman of Babylon walked through Rome, secret. Known. Searched for. Safe.

5.8b

[I was reading a post by a blogger I don't read--one of you all's friends? Anyway just stalking it up a little and he wasn't a particularly good or effective writer (his writing was so passive as to cause in me a reflexive whine) but he used this one phrase: shoulderless shuffle. And I could see exactly what he was describing and it was beautiful and I'm stealing it.]

My neighbor walks with a shoulderless shuffle and a lowered head. He once was proud--veteran of two wars--but time has bent his head low. His hair is wisp and wild. He's my friend.

I don't know him at all.

5.8

I still think on Scarmarella, repeat her last words in my sleep. She steals the seconds without my other, when I am lonely, confused, and cheap. (I think--I know--I will not tell you, I'll brush it off as nothing more) Let me tell you of Scarmarella, blackest heart I know: a girl who shards the pots she loves and finds time to make more. I was her pot, once, broken on her floor. I waited there, alone with others for her foot to fall and crush my corners. I leave her memory with mortar seeping from my ears. Repaired.

Oh, the nights we used to spend! We were candy shoppers then, children with our pockets bulging. And when we, candy-gorged, crawled into the playhouse, ringing laughter, you were taffy then to me. Sweet and soft, I loved you dearly, more than even I could know. "Oh," you whisper, "I would live here--" in this place, with me? With me? With me!? I bit off more than I could chew, for you, giggle. I can pull from you like taffy turners a truth a truth a truth until I learn of you in increments I cut and package cellophane and tape. Those truths I treasure, always, how you'll live in future times. But now on opening the package, I see the all is me, unmade. Your truths are lonely, not together. Your truths are future, not with me.

Scarmarella mine, you're mine no longer. I let you float in nether realms, the darkest of my heart's remember. I hate you. Just leave me alone.

(we day again)

5.5

The quiet sound of your sobs still seeps through the walls, so thin that I hear you through drywall, studs, jointer, wallpaper, screws and all. The failure of the builders to make a division to hold us separate only speeds the inevitable. I don't only want to hear you cry.

5.3

Charlie is peripatetic. He told me so, but I'm not sure what he meant by it. Sometimes, I regret selling my dictionary to him.

5.2

The waft of cherry blossoms smelled to me like north wind and home. The North was always meant to be a grave for the folks who braved it; a trap in bright summers to belie the winters. But to me, it always carried the scent of going home.

4.23

"Hope is strong; Justice and Truth their winged child have found." The Revolt of Islam, Percy Shelley.
[I want to write like that]

The wings were stiff and ungainly at first, their muscles having only recently been grown and stitched together. The tiny sutures limited the extreme movement the laboratory claimed to achieve, but I could still feel the raw power in them. The whispery hair that covered the inside and leading edges of the wings hadn't fully acclimated to my nervous system yet, and I could keenly feel every breath in the room. The wingtips were so sensitive and raw that I gasped when they brushed against the ground, and I took to holding my monstrous appendages directly out behind me. And my bones--oh, my bones. They had been siphoned to reduce weight. I had been shaved, my muscles stripped, my intestine reduced, half my liver, a kidney, and my teeth removed to save weight. It was all gristle anyway, but the marrow I missed. The weekly injections of white blood cells from my still-functioning marrow hurt badly enough that I blacked out several times. But I can't argue with results.

I could fly. And not a somber, scientific glide but real, sustained, beautiful flight. I ruled the skies: the biggest bird earth has seen since Incubus.

Why did they do this to me? Why invest the time, effort, and money? Why steal from the mouths of babies? The aim was always simple and obvious: to make a better alternative. To show the future. To eliminate the past. To sate America's love for blood.
I had become a tool of the government in a scheme so broad that I was the brush stroke, and the brush seeming God.

Only the brush will know if I am to succeed or fall.

3.28

[originally a comment I made on a blog, and it deserves to be there, but I wanted to save it here. Maybe I'll post it later.]
Today I saw a picture of an old friend on Facebook and I was taken aback. I had to click on it; I was compelled.
She is a beautiful woman, but for no reason related to her physical attractiveness. Physical beauty is not an asset she has. It is her smile. I cannot describe how a smile tears through her from one end to the other like a package on christmas morning. I can't stop trying to make her laugh because she doesn't hold back even one ounce of joy. I would think she would run out but she keep pouring it on, heap after heap, until you find that she is your friend and there's nothing you could have done to avoid it.
I saw her profile and was compelled to enlarge it, to absorb it, because some brilliant photographer had somehow captured her smile and spread it evenly over every pixel and allowed it to soak in. It was the most amazing thing I have seen and easily the best profile picture I have seen on Facebook in at least five years.

3.27

Fire rings his eyes. I read that today in an anti masturbation pamphlet from the 1800s. Why can't I write like that, even when I'm ultimately extending myself ? It came out of nowhere, hit me straight between the eyes. I can't even fathom what the man must have been thinking when he wrote those words.

3.24

She can't believe it; sometimes it's like he tries to aggravate her. Like today, he said "I'll get to the Poly" and she heard him, she did hear him, he said it. But this evening, where's the grocery? Where's the house paint she needed? Nowhere. And where was he? Getting to the Poly. Aggravating. This evening, a time she should have been able to use for chores and work will instead be wasted waiting for him to get back from a chore he should have done first, not last.
And then again, maybe it's more annoying that he never does it on purpose.