Archive for March, 2009

It was the end of the world all over again. Trucks and trailers filled the avenue, loaded with equipment for the parade.

I climbed the contraption in the penny arcade, an antique fortune-telling mill of whirring cogs and wheels that spit out script, and my shoe got caught in the gears, breaking the sole. I didn’t take it for an oracle. Better my shoe than my foot.

Like orange plastic cap toe ankle boots that didn’t really fit, I was on the move. Everything I owned was in two white canvas duffel bags. I stopped off to see the drama coach before I left town.

Tell me about two strange things you saw in the air, she said.

A little white cotton rag doll floated in the window and out again. Morning sun painted the limestone cornice. The warm light spread like a smile

When the signal was overwhelmed I couldn’t ignore the noise.

Deep red basement walls begrimed with black soot
The room empty except for pipes and wires and me
I heard music and dancing above on the street

A terra cotta bust, like some relic from Pompei
Scuttled crablike across the gritty floor
Empty eyes inquired why I was alone

I tried to say that all the action was upstairs
Which made me realize and decide
To bring the ancient thing outside

The head sank into a hole in the floor
I wrapped my fingers around its face
It held me fast, I was entombed

Blended from an old private formula in which experience and skill combined to produce a perfect mixture, a voice came from a black canvas tote. Inside I found broken glass, picnic trash and a boy with a bad gash on his scalp.

It was the end of the world all over again, again.

Don’t transition until you’ve established your identity, said the boyishly bearded director to the actors in the experimental performance. The old man on stage said, I’m an old Jewish man but I don’t know who I am. The old woman on stage said, I’m his wife and I’m worried.

Alleviate these symptoms by taking these simple steps.

They transformed into painted horsemen in flapping robes and roiled around the arena like liquid plastic in a bravura demonstration of shape shifting with maximum speed and elasticity.

There’s always plenty to do for all ages. Learn about nature right in your own backyard. But civilization—seemingly embodied in what one poem calls the impulse to “master nature”—is, as usual, the problem.

During his first days at Yale he happily made friends with the pretty girls in the library. Still he was concerned about the odd skin condition on his shoulder blade—a rubbery, ribbon-like fungus similar to what he’d seen on trees and rocks while vacationing in Maine. Somehow it was growing through his clothes.

A turbaned rider dismounted and approached me, the display’s sole spectator. With a loaded paintbrush he ceremonially swiped my forehead cerulean.

In addition, due to ongoing switch and mechanical problems at the Broad Channel Station, please expect delays in service on the A and S trains at this time.

To run through the streets with such ease and speed you’re sure you’ve won the race, even though you’re competing with relay teams passing batons. At the finish line in the stadium you find you haven’t even finished third.

Cloudy with snow. Cold. High around 25F. Make no mistake, however. The flexibility of the platform makes it adaptable to more than just rectangular shapes. As long as a line of sight can be established, the link will work through clear windows, without the need to establish direct contact.

A cormorant caught a tremendous fish—
Well, bigger than its pterodactyl head.
I thought the black neck twisting out of the water,
The flapping brown fins held tight in the beak,
Were a particularly lively piece of New York harbor trash
Until I saw the bird’s gleaming eye
Register grim resolution
To shift its prey in the lock of its jaws
To hold it just right, rear back, open wide
And gulp the fish down in three big bites.
Then the bird meandered on the whitecapped water
Neither diving nor winging away.
The fish, of course, was going nowhere.

She said he was rude and insulting. He thought she was out of line herself, not to mention nuts, but he apologized anyway, loud enough for the whole table to hear. Like the yoga mat registration desk on the cruise ship, the officious clerk with his slips and receipts in dusty cubbyholes, sometimes you just had to put up with people.

Changing constants is even simpler. We will again setup the Digital Output 1. Click on Main. Display will read, “Changes have been made to system parameters. Save Changes? Yes, No.” Select Yes and enter. Changes are now complete.