It was the fall that surprised me most.
I had never intended to move to the Northeast. Strange set of circumstances. Long story. Really long. Maybe not too long to relate, but longer than I'd like it to have. I just sort of ended up there.
Anyway, I got there in early December. I thought, having come from California, that that was "winter".
That's not winter.
Winter is bleak. Winter is white death. Winter is hell -- not just for Chekhov, mind you. For Vermont, too.
The first week I was there, I was talking about how poorly-equipped Southern California...
Whap! That's what the thunderbolt felt like. Never felt one before that fateful day. Not sure I can stand another.
I remember the first day I saw her, the woman of my dreams. I didn’t know she was the woman of my dreams at first, that came the moment I saw her smile.
A colleague and I were talking one day and her name came up. He said if you ever see her smile, you’ll never forget it. He was right. One day, not long after, I happened to make her smile and that was it. That was the day the...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs. They were surprised by how small it was -- "I don't even think an adult could fit in there," he said.
"Sure, if it was an adult midget," she said.
"How big of a midget?" he said.
"We're not really going to discuss the relative sizes of midgets, are we?" she said, turning to look at him for the first time since they found the passageway.
"I think dwarf is the preferred nomenclature anyway," he said with a tired air, pushing the hair out of his eyes. His glasses had slid down his...
When the butterflies are high in the afternoon sky is the best time to sit by the lake. I am lucky to have the view I do, not many people can just waltz out their back door and be in the wonderland that is nature. I can.
I take my walkman (don't judge me) with me whenever I go down to the lake. I like to think about the day and all the wonders tomorrow will bring. It's not so lonely just being me and my walkman because a few butterflies always join me. Their gilded wings brush the water's...
It was Andy from the grave.
"Can you speak up?" Caroline, distracted anyway by something on TV, couldn't understand him.
"I said it's Andy. From the grave. That's the muffling, the grave."
"Well, it doesn't help you're such a mumbler anyway. Wait, do you mean you're actually calling from the coffin?"
"Not really," said Andy, "but I am dead somewhere. I don't feel like I'm in a box. I feel like I'm in a cloud."
"That could be the coffin. I saw it," Caroline remembered, "it was plush."
"That's nice."
"Listen, did you want something? I've gotta head out in...
She always felt a little self-conscious about wearing headphones in public. She didn't want to seem anti-social, or too cool, or appear totally oblivious to the bike rider frantically ringing his bell as he approached from behind.
That's why she visited the gardens so much. Not so much for the flowers but butterflies had secrets of their own. They listened to their own songs and drifted through a world of their own. They wouldn't judge her musical tastes and she would be silly to judge theirs. After all, who are the deaf to judge those who can hear in color?
It wasn’t a specific look, or anything she said exactly. It was the things she didn’t do that gave it away. The way that she didn’t automatically include me in the conversation, the way she didn’t look to me when something funny happened, the way she didn’t move up to get more space but stayed, leg pressed against mine, reminding me that she was there.
All the instincts we’d developed about one another over the many years we had been friends were now kicking into gear and compensating for all the things we couldn’t say, not with all these people...
It was the fall that surprised me the most. We worked together for years on the 82nd floor of Tower two, and when I knew we couldn't get to the bottom I knew he'd want to go to the top. I agreed immediately even though I knew he had a plan, he always had a plan. I was too busy not thinking clearly to think clearly, about what this plan would would to do us, how it would end, how we could survive.
For the last minute of his life, the terror was gone. His smile didn't surprise me, I...
The sepia girl smiled at me as I tucked her photograph back into my wallet.
I'd found it several years ago, inside a book in a box on a table at a garage sale. I hadn't ended up buying anything from the sale, but I'd taken the photo. I suppose you could say it was stealing, but I've never thought about it that way.
She seemed lonely. I was just taking her from a life spent between pages on the Ottoman Empire, with me. I travel a lot, and a part of me wanted her to see the world.
I...
I know, I know, there's a million things I need to do. Every day, a million things. Check this, talk to him, to her. Don't forget to fill this out. Drive there, don't forget. Get it right the first time so you don't lose more time doing it twice. Or worse.
Only at the end of the day, is it legal to relax. Only when the world is on half-time, lunch break, dinner break, time out, penalty box.
The sun is one big green light for everyone. You can't stop when the world is go.
If I didn't want to...