2 February 2005 to 14 October 2004 · tagged fiction
1. Place one standard metric drum of whole or partial flour in a preheated diorama for one hour at 11°40' South, 43°19' East.
2. In a separate movement, collect the impetus of four ovals, and encourage until mildly absent. If ovals are unseasonable, you may substitute another idiom.
3. Add the olive pits, caramel wrappers and peeled marshmallows, two at a time, being careful that they do not become defibrillated or indurate.
4a-4d. Set aside.
5. Present each guest with an uncontroversial discussion topic, or a single unscented flower.
6. 20 minutes before serving, restate the major objections in a penitent tone. Objectors may require a moment of relative silence or absolute darkness.
7. Line a large ukulele mold with gravel and paraffin. Spread the batter counterclockwise, with quick, variegated strokes of a 3.25mm (or wider) vegetable punch. Qualify with silvered almonds and doll hair.
8. When the winter has just started to become oppressive, exchange the final two layers. Performate the top crust with hardwood in moral or gull shapes. Allow to coalesce, and then demonstrate at anteroom temperature on slowly revolving stained glass.
2. In a separate movement, collect the impetus of four ovals, and encourage until mildly absent. If ovals are unseasonable, you may substitute another idiom.
3. Add the olive pits, caramel wrappers and peeled marshmallows, two at a time, being careful that they do not become defibrillated or indurate.
4a-4d. Set aside.
5. Present each guest with an uncontroversial discussion topic, or a single unscented flower.
6. 20 minutes before serving, restate the major objections in a penitent tone. Objectors may require a moment of relative silence or absolute darkness.
7. Line a large ukulele mold with gravel and paraffin. Spread the batter counterclockwise, with quick, variegated strokes of a 3.25mm (or wider) vegetable punch. Qualify with silvered almonds and doll hair.
8. When the winter has just started to become oppressive, exchange the final two layers. Performate the top crust with hardwood in moral or gull shapes. Allow to coalesce, and then demonstrate at anteroom temperature on slowly revolving stained glass.
1. Boy with orange hat. Seen by Emma waiting, apparently, for a bus outside of the Vargeld.
2. Construction planner. Referred to twice in the conversation between Marik and the couriers. Known to be exacting and arrhythmic.
3. Civic meterer. Lives in one of the blue houses on the street behind Aria's building. Older, listing. Complains to Storod on the street during the blackout, although it's not clear whether she understands that power is a quantity. Collects silkscreened eggs.
4. The replacement florist. Shoes suggest decline in fortune is recent; idiom implies acceptance. Would give flowers to unattended children, but obviously in the Corridor there do not tend to be many of these. Hums drones. Panics in traffic.
5. The translator who dreams of the continuity of oceans. Implied by Marik's speech to the victims, later referred to by Emma in her list of terms. Misses the last train the night of the crash, and thus is still in Anholz Station when the Minister's staff arrives. Wary of owls, expectations and shadow.
6. Aria's broker. Indirectly introduces Garner to Maribelle, and thus to the Morrises. Sends the letter, after all, although in the end most of the mentors probably believe this was Jonathan, especially after Jonathan conceals the sale. Dropped last, and somewhat arbitrarily, just before the move.
7. Sprinter. Sits in front of the Minister during the first act, but is reseated in the orchestra after the arrests. Never really suspends disbelief, and would go with Gossett if the bridge were closed. Loans jazz to borrow edges.
8. Parts buyer. Misunderstands Emma's question about phases, but gives her the right number by mistake. Takes over from the warder during the flood, and treats the children's questions seriously. Solves the maze. Sleepless and drained and stronger than walls.
2. Construction planner. Referred to twice in the conversation between Marik and the couriers. Known to be exacting and arrhythmic.
3. Civic meterer. Lives in one of the blue houses on the street behind Aria's building. Older, listing. Complains to Storod on the street during the blackout, although it's not clear whether she understands that power is a quantity. Collects silkscreened eggs.
4. The replacement florist. Shoes suggest decline in fortune is recent; idiom implies acceptance. Would give flowers to unattended children, but obviously in the Corridor there do not tend to be many of these. Hums drones. Panics in traffic.
5. The translator who dreams of the continuity of oceans. Implied by Marik's speech to the victims, later referred to by Emma in her list of terms. Misses the last train the night of the crash, and thus is still in Anholz Station when the Minister's staff arrives. Wary of owls, expectations and shadow.
6. Aria's broker. Indirectly introduces Garner to Maribelle, and thus to the Morrises. Sends the letter, after all, although in the end most of the mentors probably believe this was Jonathan, especially after Jonathan conceals the sale. Dropped last, and somewhat arbitrarily, just before the move.
7. Sprinter. Sits in front of the Minister during the first act, but is reseated in the orchestra after the arrests. Never really suspends disbelief, and would go with Gossett if the bridge were closed. Loans jazz to borrow edges.
8. Parts buyer. Misunderstands Emma's question about phases, but gives her the right number by mistake. Takes over from the warder during the flood, and treats the children's questions seriously. Solves the maze. Sleepless and drained and stronger than walls.
These days the memory of her voice pulls me out of good dreams, but not bad ones, so at least now there is some solace in nightmare.
The material in his pants was worth more than some people's cars, but the color of them has never, in the entire span of human in history, been in fashion for anything intended to be seen outside of an esophagus.
There will be plenty of time, later, to argue about the difference between compulsion and regret.
The exact spin of the truck, as it crossed the median already shedding clouds of Korean aluminum and Malaysian static-fiber, took its front wheels close enough to my head for me to pick out the smell of tires leaving asphalt.
I remember when I stopped knowing what you think, and later, when I stopped caring.
This desert used to be a place.
You will always open the yellow door, and most of the time this is what will lead you to her.
He knows I hate him looking away while he's talking to me, but he also knows how his profile affects me, and I have never known how he balances these two and decides whether to turn.
I wish I could promise you that I'm never going to lie.
In the Mexico where the three of us learned what time is worth, waiting is sometimes a way forward.
A 647-year-old oil painting in a perfectly square frame lifts silently off a cloud-grey wall, and 405 miles away a zero changes to a one with a peripheral click.
The man with the third code wears black leather shoes that seem unremarkable until you notice that they bear no manufacturer's logo of any kind, gray wool pants with faint dots of heel-flung sand up the back of both legs, a blue crew-neck sweather with folds still pressed into it from having sat on wire shelving under great weight, and an immaculate almond-brown felt stetson under whose left brim, two inches behind his ear, the bullet has just entered.
The three largest American tobacco companies have each killed more human beings that all the world's missile manufactuers put together, which is indirectly but indisputably why, for the fourth time since I swore this would stop happening, I am standing on the front step of my own house in early afternoon sunlight with a cardboard box full of snow globes in my arms, trying to improve on how I broke this news to Meredith before.
"The processes for cigarettes and cheese," he was saying, "are basically the same," which explains a little bit about the cigarettes and quite a lot about the cheese.
A red square is sealed by any movement into an adjacent black rank, unsealed on the conversion of its original marker, and removed from play after the third change in control, all of which Marco knows exactly as well as I do, so I wait patiently while he fumes at what he will presently recognize has been his own negligence.
The brownstone was rehabbed half-heartedly in the late Nineties, the dog still has his appetite but not his hearing, and the Belgian in the neck brace has been dead for no more than an hour.
I am doing something viscous and unmentionable when the phone explodes.
The material in his pants was worth more than some people's cars, but the color of them has never, in the entire span of human in history, been in fashion for anything intended to be seen outside of an esophagus.
There will be plenty of time, later, to argue about the difference between compulsion and regret.
The exact spin of the truck, as it crossed the median already shedding clouds of Korean aluminum and Malaysian static-fiber, took its front wheels close enough to my head for me to pick out the smell of tires leaving asphalt.
I remember when I stopped knowing what you think, and later, when I stopped caring.
This desert used to be a place.
You will always open the yellow door, and most of the time this is what will lead you to her.
He knows I hate him looking away while he's talking to me, but he also knows how his profile affects me, and I have never known how he balances these two and decides whether to turn.
I wish I could promise you that I'm never going to lie.
In the Mexico where the three of us learned what time is worth, waiting is sometimes a way forward.
A 647-year-old oil painting in a perfectly square frame lifts silently off a cloud-grey wall, and 405 miles away a zero changes to a one with a peripheral click.
The man with the third code wears black leather shoes that seem unremarkable until you notice that they bear no manufacturer's logo of any kind, gray wool pants with faint dots of heel-flung sand up the back of both legs, a blue crew-neck sweather with folds still pressed into it from having sat on wire shelving under great weight, and an immaculate almond-brown felt stetson under whose left brim, two inches behind his ear, the bullet has just entered.
The three largest American tobacco companies have each killed more human beings that all the world's missile manufactuers put together, which is indirectly but indisputably why, for the fourth time since I swore this would stop happening, I am standing on the front step of my own house in early afternoon sunlight with a cardboard box full of snow globes in my arms, trying to improve on how I broke this news to Meredith before.
"The processes for cigarettes and cheese," he was saying, "are basically the same," which explains a little bit about the cigarettes and quite a lot about the cheese.
A red square is sealed by any movement into an adjacent black rank, unsealed on the conversion of its original marker, and removed from play after the third change in control, all of which Marco knows exactly as well as I do, so I wait patiently while he fumes at what he will presently recognize has been his own negligence.
The brownstone was rehabbed half-heartedly in the late Nineties, the dog still has his appetite but not his hearing, and the Belgian in the neck brace has been dead for no more than an hour.
I am doing something viscous and unmentionable when the phone explodes.
When the airport was still new, and we were still young, and our city was still old
Before the night stole our river, and the river took the trees, and we learned to inhabit empty spaces without filling them
After even the wolves learned mercy and swam into the retreating sea
When the ground was still made of hope, and the sky smelled only of air
Before we learned how to sleep without resting, and wake again without ever having dreamed
Before the night stole our river, and the river took the trees, and we learned to inhabit empty spaces without filling them
After even the wolves learned mercy and swam into the retreating sea
When the ground was still made of hope, and the sky smelled only of air
Before we learned how to sleep without resting, and wake again without ever having dreamed
Her skin glows at the edges, and we are never going to be here again today. Our margins are made of air, our hearts of water, and the ice is tuned to songs we used to know. Dissipation and spark flutter, and never touch our walls. And we are held in these postures. Whatever you see in that light, I know truer lines. And we are secure in these doubts, and safe in evanescent homes. And you are finally asleep.
At night the sand flows into our rooms, and it is a little easier to imagine how we could leave.
How long have I known, and when did I decide on this sad version I admit to everyone but you?
I wake instantly to the absence of your hands.
The light makes its way through the curls of your hair, then falls to the floor.
Eventually there will be too many of them for anything but hate.
It is little consolation to drown in better water.
Around the next corner, I swear, I will understand something I have brought us here to face.
His letters got longer, but drifted farther, until too much space crept in between the words, and the paper could no longer carry me from one to the next fast enough to be sure it was still him I was missing.
Walk to the bridge with me again, just this once more, in the dress I bought you with money from the smell of burned cotton and the gleaming shards of sighs.
At night the sand flows into our rooms, and we trace channels back through it into the sea and away.
How long have I known, and when did I decide on this sad version I admit to everyone but you?
I wake instantly to the absence of your hands.
The light makes its way through the curls of your hair, then falls to the floor.
Eventually there will be too many of them for anything but hate.
It is little consolation to drown in better water.
Around the next corner, I swear, I will understand something I have brought us here to face.
His letters got longer, but drifted farther, until too much space crept in between the words, and the paper could no longer carry me from one to the next fast enough to be sure it was still him I was missing.
Walk to the bridge with me again, just this once more, in the dress I bought you with money from the smell of burned cotton and the gleaming shards of sighs.
At night the sand flows into our rooms, and we trace channels back through it into the sea and away.
I've told you many things that were not entirely true, sometimes (but not always) knowingly, and if I'm going to fix the damage this has done to us, I have to tell you two more.
There are not very many cities left that simply end, and fewer still that are complex enough to end and then begin again.
Her dress might have reached her ankles if it had started at her knees.
Today, on a broken sidewalk outside a failing book store in a city passing quietly from resurgence to flight, we will not quite yet meet.
The Glass of Regard is, in the strictest literal sense, a hotel.
There are not very many cities left that simply end, and fewer still that are complex enough to end and then begin again.
Her dress might have reached her ankles if it had started at her knees.
Today, on a broken sidewalk outside a failing book store in a city passing quietly from resurgence to flight, we will not quite yet meet.
The Glass of Regard is, in the strictest literal sense, a hotel.