dear bobo,
happy birthday! i am sorry i missed it, but i hummed the song for you this morning while we convoyed into the city. i think you're eight now, but it's hard to keep track 'cuz you just seem so big and grown-up each time i see you.
mom tells me you got bit on the neck by a spider the other day and that you haven't been feeling so great. she says maybe you're not having a birthday party this year 'cuz some weird stuff happened when you first tried to go back to school after getting sick....
Trivia. I only found out when one of my (many) credit cards was refused. Then a debt collection agency letter arrived. Finally, some landlord of office space told me I was 9 months in arrears and I had two days to remove my stuff.
Of course, I went round there. Not enough room to swing a cat DOT com would have been a good name for them. However, when I was given the key by a guard who joked as if he knew me, and "at least this time you're wearing clothes." I entered the storage room (closet?) to find...
The children were not at school. Not today with a masked gunman roaming the streets. Everyone was indoors with the doors bolted, probably hiding in closets, attics or basements.
Jess was outside in the sunshine, on the swing. Whooshing high in the air and back down, laughing aloud, breaking the silence, wondering where the helicopters were, the swat cars, armed police.
She felt as though she was the only person left on earth.
Perhaps she was.
That's what the gunman thought when he spotted her long dark hair through the gap in the fence.
He was tired by now, wanted...
One misty morning, the green-clad man woke up to his usual alarm clock. He looked out his window to see the sun shining heavily. "Jolly good! I can finally get a tan, and women will find me attractive!" He exclaimed as he rushed out from his covers to get dressed. As he was walking out the front door, he heard an unfortunate newscaster announce, "Well, if you're planning to go to the beach today, you might want a change in plans. Turns out lots of rain is headed in only a couple of hours. It's a good thing I already...
He knocked the three knocks. The two rap-raps. He whistled like a wren. Then he knocked twice again. The flight attendant replied, "Captain. Pick up the phone. I'm not playing your games."
"Oh come on. Just reply with the secret knock. It's easy."
"What is it you want?"
"To go to the restroom."
"Ok. Punch in your code and I'll punch in mine, and we'll get you to the lavatory and back."
She punches her code, her hand on the handle. She waits. "Captain?" She hears three knocks. Two rap-raps. A whistle like a wren.
"Captain. I'm a grown woman....
Away.
He'd escaped.
And not in the usual way.
Home from school at 7:30pm, another long day of detention for crimes uncommitted (who ever did anything really deserving detention – and when has detention been worse than the alternative. Questions he wrestled with with his head on his desk) – home long after sunset, he pressed his head against his pillow and cried.
The tears awoke the empathy of the waters in the room. His fishbowl grew stormy. A glass of water shuddered with tsunami. The poster of the ship on the wall erupted in gale and he could feel the lash...
Matilda changed a great many things in my empty life. I started to wonder if a meal could be too good after such a long time being hungry....?
She filled a vacuum that was up until her kept quelled with the useless, busy ennui that consumes most our days.
Pleasing people who didn't care a whit about pleasing us. Satisfying faceless clients who lived miles away.
She made life real again.
Matilda, her cat taught me a great deal, too.
He'd sat patiently on the threshold of the kitchen all afternoon. She'd dropped countless morsels of crust, of walnuts, chunks of apple and even some of her own snacks, the clumsy klutz. Yet he'd abstained, withheld, conquered himself.
Now she was taunting him -- he felt it deep in his soul. She'd left the pies to cool -- small round pies, aromatic sweet pies -- at eye level. His eyes. She'd gone from the house (where? did it matter?) and left him to conquer himself.
Taunting his resolve. He thought to his mother who'd trained him in her ascetic ways....
It was the quiet way Fron did the simple things - anticipating a glass of water, settling to a joint task, silently prompting something urgently forgotten - that Wilhelm noticed more than anything else. She would just eye smile at him when he, yet again amazed at her casual thoughtfulness, would gratify his mutterings. As if words were not necessary.
It was as bewitching as it was uncanny. He felt she could pluck a dropped desire out of the air, well before its longing weight would shatter it on the hard stone floor of the bakery. Slowly, quickly, her careless...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
After a carefully judged amount of time she stood up and retied the bow at her waist.
"Sure, you stood me up at prom, Adam," she said, "but THIS is for calling my dissertation 'feeble-minded and a stunning waste of recycled pulp' in front of my advisor."
She retrieved her bike and stuck a hardbound volume titled "AN OPTIMIZED PROGRAMMABLE BINARY ARCHITECTURE FOR A SCALABLE DIGITAL THEOREM ITERATOR" into the handlebar basket.
Then, whistling, she hiked up her skirts, straddled the seat, and biked off into...