I can smell the ocean in the distance. The salt wraps around my body, making my skin feel tight, and already I want to shower. I can do big cities, and small cities, and the even the occasional mountaintop is cool. But oceans are ridiculous. They tak...
I am scared of the photo studio. I am scared of the telephone. Scared of anything outside our apartment. Scared of the people in their big fur hats. Scared of the snow. Scared of the cold. Scared of the heat. Scared of the ceiling fan at which I woul...
The people who run the circus kidnapped us from our parents. Since we got here, we have all been working in the circus. We can’t see any of our mummies or kiss them OR cuddle up to them. said Adrian. His tears flowing in his big blue eyes that were...
Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it. How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages. ... The Information Age is scheduled im...
Home was his favorite place too. But home for him was anywhere Jane happened to be. Never in his life had he loved someone as much as he loved her. So much that it scared him sometimes. He pulled her against him and looked out over the city. He was i...
Well, there is rough old Albert, as ornery as any big brother a girl could have, putting his arm around Savannah and cooing to her like a repenting hound dog, and promising her she is not common nor shameful. I watched all this and thought you just n...
In the front was a man he knew only as “Samson,” a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held togethe...
If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrend...
The summer,' Randy explained. 'I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to walk in the woods noticing everything, and ride my bike on all the roads I never explored. I'm going to fill a pillow with ladies' tobacco so I can smell it in January and rememb...
The Christian right, which trumpets the theme of family values, damns contemporary culture for undermining older traditions. Yet many individuals from this camp are not concerned first and foremost about family values per se. Family is a codeword for...
In the case of Tunisia, it was indeed this single act that sparked what had been long-standing active protest movements and moved them forward. But that's not so unusual. Let's look at our own history. Take the civil rights movement. There had been p...
When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they ...
614246 "... in an airport in '64, Goldwater said, 'Well, keep punching, Hubert' during a chance meeting there. By the end of 1977, it became increasingly clear that the Boss (Hubert Humphrey) would not be around much longer. And on the Senate floor o...
I ripped all her clothes off. She twisted and turned, slow, so they would slip out from under her. Then she closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in snaky curls. Her eye was all black, and her breasts wer...
Sebastian got up and walked to the window, resting his forehead against the pane. It was cold outside, and the icy chill pressed up against him through the glass. He liked the sensation. It was big. Grand. The sort of vivid moment that reminded him o...
Stop!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him.” “Back off!” Billy shouted. She yanked harder on Billy’s arm. “He isn’t a vampire anymore, idiot. Look! Do you see that big, yellow thing up in the sky? That’s called the sun. It’s shining d...
On its own, my internal dissociated part now came to the surface, and I found myself hiding from everyone. I still was not connecting it to the dream I'd had. At one time I had thought I could control these sudden episodes, but I was apparently mista...
When we truly fear God, our fear of other things and other people begins to wane. Big fears make little fears go away. We can spend our days worrying about a host of daily challenges, but let the word cancer be mentioned in the same sentence with our...
Where and how did my relationship with Kumiko go wrong? That's what I can't understand. Not that I'm saying everything was perfect until that point. A man and a woman in their twenties, with two distinct personalities, just happen to meet somewhere a...
Opportunity to suspend disbelief is often why we watch movies. The stories and images touch us and shift perspectives in ways we may not allow in our daily lives. As readily as you check your “this isn’t real” attitude at the ticket counter –...
I think maybe bad things seem worse when people are alone. When they can turn that bad thought over and over in their head, polishing it like a stone, until it shines dark and black. Maybe the key to making things better is being with other people. L...
