Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pa...
Wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the m...
somewhere along the dust-chocked Guatemalan road between...and ...was where I confirmed that I preferred traveling around the slow, bone-rattling way: by bus,with ordinary people. The bus we were riding in had been repainted in bright reds. The insid...
Her name was Rebecca. Or at least that’s what her nametag said. She was making my coffee at Starbucks as I admired how her green Starbucks apron matched her bright green eyes. She had hair the color of coffee with a hint of cream in it. I was tryin...
... and we are not alone in this slavery. there are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. this we must remember. there are many of our people who hate the poor of the white race, and they hate us. the people in ...
Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about. And then what? Were you supposed to spend the res...
Magnus had animated one of his magnificent Chinese fans, and it flapped ineffectively at him, barely stirring the breeze. It was, if he was completely honest with himself (and he did not want to be), a bit too hot for this new striped blue-and-rose-c...
Each thing organizes the space around it, rebuffing or sidling up against other things; each thing calls, gestures, beckons to other beings or battles them for our attention; things expose themselves to the sun or retreat among the shadows, shouting ...
Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the ...
In the country whereto I go I shall not see the face of my friend Nor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses; Together we shall not find The land on whose hills bends the new moon In air traversed of birds. What have I thought of love? I have said, "...
Unrequited love," I'd say. He'd look at me sideways in that cunning way he did and say, "what about it?" and I'd reply, "it's not your color." Pithy. Just to show him that I'd noticed. Or maybe I'd show myself to her and say, "Guess I'm not the only ...
Do stones feel? Do they love their life? Or does their patience drown out everything else? When I walk on the beach I gather a few white ones, dark ones, the multiple colors. Don’t worry, I say, I’ll bring you back, and I do. Is the tree as it ri...
To all you sensitive sallys out there who spend your time scribing angry letters, I have great news: Scientific models show that in the not-too-distant future, all the races will become so completely interbred that humanity will have a monolithic car...
I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended ...
The street signs”, she replied simply. I simply felt stupid. “When you learn how to read, you can read Stop, Go, and the colors matter too!” “Yeah?”, (sigh). “Yup! That leaf is green, it means Go. The yellow like the bus means careful. Th...
It's not that racism doesn't exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It's just that I rarely worry about those things because there's a real world underneath all that nonsense;...
Aiden was staring. So was Caleb, although he looked like he was quite used to all this...woman on display. Hell, even I was staring. She crossed the hall, her long legs parting the chiffon of her skirt, playing peekaboo. Dear gods, I felt my cheeks s...
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want th...
Before I can say , I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what ...
The Plot Against The Giant First Girl When this yokel comes maundering, Whetting his hacker, I shall run before him, Diffusing the civilest odors Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers. It will check him. Second Girl I shall run before him, Arching c...
Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hi...
