Ruby looked out the window and couldn't help but smiling. She was probably much more excited for the first day of school than Ella! The sweet clean little tennis shoes, new notebooks and pencils, pictures by the bus and the classroom door of her little girl in a too-big back pack, even the tears and constant missing, all of it seemed exciting to Ruby. It meant Ella was growing up, and though it hurt beyond description, Ruby was so excited for all of the beautiful new experiences the world was opening up for her little girl.
"Mom?" Ruby turned and...
It wasn't so bad, the cancer, eating me from the inside out. Started with headaches, diagnoses, hopes and dreams dashed like fine china on the asphalt. My hands shaking, pillow wet in the morning, children gripping me, knowing without words that life was changing. Daddy is dying, mommy said. Like grandma. No, daddy isn't going to heaven. There is no heaven. Only the great void. Its nothing to be afraid of Sofie. Daddy loves you. More doctors and pills, and then pain and then...nothing. The desire to life squashed like a grape on the supermarket floor. Life itself spinning, a...
All he needed was one picture. That was it. Just one. Too bad for him it was a specific picture. But the Internet always had what you needed, right? Heck, he was willing to pay for it. The entire company was counting on him.
"I got this, guys," he said as everyone was leaving for the night. "We're gold come morning. The investers just want to see that view added to the presentation."
They believed him. Heck, he believed himself. And he succeeded. It took a chunk out of his boss's platinum card, but big deal. This merger would earn...
It approached. The first day of writing a 6 minute story. "Excuse me? A story about a story? That's so meta", I whispered to myself. The truth is, the story is really about life, and life is both the story and the story teller.
Four minutes. Really, it took two just to write that paragraph? "It's been so long since I've written creatively", I thought to myself. It's true. It's been years. Nowadays, most of my words are shaped in the form of technical documents, twitter updates, and code.
Three minutes. Time is ticking down. I look to my right,...
The lone zombie shambled toward the clubhouse, where we watched, armed with nine irons and pitching wedges. I turned to Adam and said, "Par three, buddy."
"You're on, Sev," Adam replied, and grabbed a bucket of balls, ran out to the porch, and teed up.
His swing was a bit off, and he hooked it, but the ball stayed on the fairway. Not bad, considering the threat of gruesome zombie death that potentially loomed.
"Okay, this time I got him!" Adam shouted, and teed up another ball.
This time, his shot was picture-perfect, and the ball whizzed through the air,...
Travel light, but take everything with you.
That was the last message I received from my father before he began his ascent. The words struck me in an unexpected way. I had anticipated experiencing a range of emotions at the outset of his trek. Exasperation at the foolishness of this mid-life-crisis-driven thrill-seeker kick. Pride in his ambition. Fear for his life--no, fear for my own life, which would change drastically and uncomfortably if he never made it back.
But at the base of that mountain, with ice on the wind, as he read me that short passage from the introduction...
Not that he could fell it, but judging from the way he staggered with every few steps, his legs hadn't healed completely. It was likely he was setting himself up to trip and collapse again, unable to move, but he knew he couldn't stay any longer. He tried to make his steps as steady as possible, but with no percerption of how much weight he was applying, he was at a loss to gauge if he was accomplishing much, and in the back of his mind simply waited for the tell-tale crack of bones re-fracturing, and plummet into the grass....
"What's the worst thing you ever done in a Church, Sunshine?"
I looked at Beloved, I shrugged, although goosepimples and ice water prickled my body. "I killed a pigeon once."
"What?" Beloved laughed, his mouth pulled, his cheeks puffed and he pinched one lens of his glasses, pulling them up his face. "You're kidding."
"Nope," I said and I walked away from him, my arms clasped behind my back and I looked back and forth, up and down, and touched the smooth paint of the white-washed pews. "I killed it dead."
"WHY?" Beloved was still smiling, I did not have...
They were trapped for seven days. God's work was able to be done in freedom: the dividing line between earth and sky, earth and ocean, the fecund fields with animals and birds, the oceans teeming with fish and monsters, the two legged animals - human beings - created to carry God's hope.
But the forces of chaos, of tohu and bohu, were chained for those seven days; trapped and kept away from the great work of creation.
There was order at work: chaos was trapped. There was fertility abounding: destruction was stayed. There was ingenuity in creation: blankness was put...
"I hate everyone today," he said.
"Everyone?" she asked.
"Everyone."
"Even me?"
"Well, except you."
"Glad to hear it."
"I hate everyone else, though. And everything else."
"Do you hate black people?"
"Well, no - I mean, yes, but no more or less than anyone else."
"How about Indians? Or Lithuanians?"
"I hate everybody equally. I'm not a bigot or anything."
"I see."
"But I still hate them. I hate all of them."
"That's nice, do you hate animals, too?"
"Yes. I hate animals, too."
"Even kittens?"
"Um ... I guess. I hate them all."
"Well, that includes kittens. How...