Wide, flat expanses lend themselves to romance. The romance of the open air and the sky as they meet the horizon and walk away. In this dusty corner of the world the muezzin stirs. He who calls the believers to prayer.
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.
Allahu Akbar into the rising sun. Allahu Akbar to the departing night. Bleary eyed with sandalled feet, the faithful congregate through the thick dust. Voices hushed as though in respect as the light beckons.
Awake for morning in the bowl of night,
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight,
And Lo, the...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It was a cold evening, and it turns out she didn't quite make the cut to be invited to the party. There's no way she could've gone back home, though. The opinion of her parents was so important to her-- having them know that she was an outcast? It wasn't an option.
So she just stood there. Outside, watching all the more popular people go in. It wouldn't have been so bad if she could sit alone in a quiet corner of the restaurant across the...
She had no idea why she'd put on her red party dress this morning. It was cold, it was overcast, and she had nowhere special to go. Still, when she'd awakened this morning, the thought that made her want to get up was not any of these:
- You have the entire day to yourself
- You deserve to do something fun
it was:
- You love the way you look in that dress.
So, on an autumn morning indistinguishable from the days that proceeded and would follow it, Sal was wearing her red silk dress, a natty trench coat,...
It was an odd feeling. Looking at a family. He'd been away from his own family for so long that he felt like he'd never had one. Now look at him, alone, dirty, addicted, wandering the streets without a cent to his name. How could he even try? It was so close. He looked at his wallet. No money. No credit cards. No business cards. Just photo, wrinkly and turned over, of the family, the life he once had. As he looked at the family in central park, it almost made his heart yearn. He wanted to turn over the...
Through the veil she was almost as pretty as I'd wished she would have been the first time we met for real, in real life, in person on the street. The love of my life.
I remembered that in certain photographs she had this quality, like an angel or maybe just someone who thought they were one, so strung out they could touch the sky. She wasn't that pretty, no pixie dust queen, just another girl who liked to make faces. But I think I love her.
You hope that, and I hoped that, the love of my life--because that's...
Not everyone knows this, but Kate Beaton is obsessive, the painterly equivalent of a Method actor. To create each new page of "Hark, a vagrant!" she recruits Swiss artists' models to dress in period clothing and pose in front of the Alps. Frozen in position as well as in time, they are required to make only the most ridiculous of faces for her art to take fruition. Eyes are stressed. At least half of the models have held a spot in Guiness for eye-bugging capability.
Once their minds are relaxed after a sufficient period of standing still, they are required...
Her mother was going to kill them when they got home, but she couldn't help it. Flinging her legs high above the corn that surrounded them, she gave a happy giggle and sighed.
"What are you thinking of now?" Greg asked her, pressing a kiss to her hair as he stretched out an arm across her stomach.
"I was thinking of mother, and the stories she used to tell of boys in the corn fields." She put on a high pitched voice, eerily close to her mother's pitch, "they're only after one thing Rose. One thing!" Greg gave the girl...
The old folks filed away from Gregoire slowly, creeping off to investigate a small marble statue of Psyche being ravished by Cupid. The chandelier hung precariously over them, and Gregoire wondered how many shots from his 19th-century pistol would send it crashing down on their aged heads.
But would Bonaparte commit such a gauche act? Gregoire thought not. Even in exile, surrounded by mad old women, he still had his dignity. He held his head high, hoping that the extra height of his admiral's hat would exceed that of the straw bonnets behind him. He would win this psychological battle....
I was on too many fucking drug to put up with this bullshit hipster girl with a balloon full of who the fuck even knows. Fuck that. I knew that I was signing up for a quirky-ass time but I didn't realize that that meant chasing someone through alleys full of rapists and foreigners and then what. My prize would probably be equally quirky, like ten gallons of Sunny D or an Altoid tin full of minty condoms. At this point I didn't care about the prize. I just wanted the game to end.
I'd been dragged into this by...