Rule 1: Everything must be 140 characters or less. A character is a letter, number or space. Rule 2: No mundane comments on where you are; e.g., “I’m drinking coffee at a Coffee Bean.” Rule 3: No cutesy observations that only you will understand, e.g., “Well, that was a sticky wicket, wasn’t it?” Rule 4: [...]
Archive for the ‘Words’ category
The Friday poems: dogs and cats
Dharma by Billy Collins The way the dog trots out the front door every morning without a hat or an umbrella, without any money or the keys to her dog house never fails to fill the saucer of my heart with milky admiration. Who provides a finer example of a life without encumbrance— Thoreau in [...]
Book Report
This is my book report for eighth-grade social studies. I read a book called “Game Change.” It was really good. It was all about the presidential campaign of 2008, which took place when I was in the sixth and seventh grades and the summer in between. I didn’t understand much about politics then, but now [...]
Shape my summer
So as this is a worldly group out there in Whatsitland, I want to pick your brains. I’ll be spending June traveling, mostly to places I have been before, and I want to see them through new eyes. YOUR eyes. We’re starting with a few days in London, and at some point over the course [...]
Influence
I was quite old before I realized that I was the only person at my church who listened to secular music. I must have been in seventh grade, because I clearly remember a Sunday School classmate asking me what my favorite album was at the time, and I said Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Of course. [...]
Humorless
I fear that I’m getting a reputation for being not-fun in my old age. Sure, I’m only 30, but it’s clear that a whole landscape of human interactions has closed off to me. My interest in movies and television has waned. And I really don’t enjoy dating as much as I used to. It all [...]
Breathing the World Around Us
About a week ago my mother was hospitalized after a rare reaction to the antibiotics she was given for pneumonia which caused her lungs to seize and interrupted her breathing. She was shopping with a friend of hers when she collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. Thankfully she’s making a full recovery [...]
The Intersection of Small Things
I like unexpected patterns, the ways in which seemingly unrelated threads might find themselves woven together. There’s a beauty in the small details. In the ways in which one thing informs another. Sometimes through sound. Sometimes through history. The mind forms associations, building both practical and improbable bridges, linking words and elements of the world. [...]
Watching Rambo for the Holidays, Thinking of Home
I confess. I spent a day and a half watching all four Rambo movies back to back. I’m not quite certain what compelled me to start this process, but having started, I ended up sitting through the entire saga of blazing guns, gigantic explosions, over-the-top 80s patriotism, and the ever-ubiquitous bloodsplatter as Rambo does another [...]
