Carve This
I have a pale roundish orb sitting on my kitchen table. It’s been slashed into submission by the relentless jabs and gouges of a sharp knife. It has aspirations towards orangeness, but to be perfectly honest it’s more of a pale brown than orange. My wife has a fond spot in her heart towards pumpkins, well not pumpkins per say, but jackolanterns. Actually you could almost say she hates pumpkins, because she likes cutting them and disfiguring them into wildly outlandish frontispieces. This year we were a little late on the draw–as of yesterday afternoon we had no pumpkin, rather an increasingly anxious desire to acquire a pumpkin to subject to our frightful designs. We hopped in the car with two objectives: get cider, and a pumpkin. The first...
The Bakery
Yesterday was a day of smells. The first sensory impression I had in the day, besides the blast of cold air that greeted me as I stepped off the bus, was the warm, sugary smell of pastries. The scent followed me from the outside plaza into the foyer, and then drifted with me down the hall–I finally shut it out by closing the elevator doors. Yet even in the elevator my nose had company; a distinct buttered-popcorn scent accompanied me to my floor. On the way to my office I stopped in the bathroom and blew my nose–trying to expel the smells from my mind so I could complete my projects in scentless peace. Alas, the solution was only temporary. Later, walking to the water fountain, I met the unmistakable odor of orange Pez–well, I think it was Pez,...
An Interrogation
Love is a constant interrogation.My eyes tripped over this line, they got up and attempted to run over it again; then stopped with the period and dashed back to the beginning to try one more time. Visions of bright lights and chain-smoking inspectors rattling off angry questions, pictures of suavely confident secret agents gently probing, before suddenly turning angry and spewing forth horrible threats, filled my mind. But the author was ready for these interpretations, these attacks based on one-dimensional preconceptions. Every apex has its nadir, and oft times the nadir is mistaken for the apex. The more I thought about the idea of Love as an Interrogation, the better I was captivated by it. I imagine God as this incredibly curious Divinity; naturally...
Alley
My shoes are off, lying disjointedly on the carpet. They’ve been through a bit today. One of my favorite lunch time activities, when it’s sunny, is urban exploration. I devour my sandwich, head outside, and then determine a direction for my journey. Finally I walk, careful to keep alert for curious alleyways or interesting shops. I like watching the people too. Empty-eyed slackers, crazy-eyed vagrants, greedy-eyed lawyers, evil-eyed politicians, wandering-eyed lechers, haughty-eyed executives–all these eyes rolling around in heads held high (or low), all waiting for the light to change so they can cross the street. Well, my feet have cooled off, and my legs are feeling more rested; the only thing that’s left is the lingering question:...
Limbering Up
I feel like some sort of frontier man, preparing for a momentous journey. I need to accustom my fingers and mind to the rigorously demanding task of producing orderly stacks of letters. With that in mind I have a goal of progressively increasing blog post volume over the next week or so. The goal of Increased Volume brings its own set of requirements: an expansion of suitable blogging topics (which in itself is really the easy part); consistent writing–mass production must not destroy quality. Those two objectives are certainly possible to meet; perhaps the biggest obstacle is psychological. In the past I have delayed at posting again due to a strange phenomenon. I am sometimes guilty of bestowing an incredible gravity upon each post; i.e., each post,...