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alienation

The Girl With Peacock Eyes

The girl with peacock eyes didn’t go to ordinary school – she went to extraordinary school.

There are all kinds of extraordinary gifts out there. Most people just hide theirs. If you’re too bright, you don’t want to be regarded a nerd or impractical or boring. If you’re too creative, you don’t want to be characterized as a potential economic failure. Maybe you just see the world in a slightly different way. But the majority punishes those who don’t see it in the majority way. Extraordinary perception is extraordinarily costly. We like amazing physical abilities, if they can be channeled into something financially rewarding like sports or music – one of the ‘ordinary’ venues for extraordinary talent. We’re less fond of extraordinary anything that isn’t practical in a business context. [Read more…] about The Girl With Peacock Eyes

The Meaning of Commitment

My manifesto to the world. I wrote big at first, until the walls were all covered. And when I needed more space, I wrote smaller words onto the larger words, using each letter as a wall. And then words onto those words, too, layering them like Russian matryoshka dolls. Words are like that – they fit into other words, and ideas fit into other ideas. You know what I mean. [Read more…] about The Meaning of Commitment

13 Simultaneous Thoughts

They told me my head would explode. I didn’t believe them. Until I heard the ticking.

Since I was a kid, I could think about several things at once. I could be doing math, figuring out how to talk to the girl in front of me, and simultaneously imagining living in ancient Egypt. Teachers would ask me, “where is your head at?” That was hard to explain, and not a little embarrassing. But I was a smart ass, so I’d just point. [Read more…] about 13 Simultaneous Thoughts

Cleopatra, Scheherazade, & the Deerchild

When Susan was seven, they were only nubs. Her mother, Marge, took her to the pediatrician. He performed a biopsy. He sent her to a specialist. The specialist deemed the growth benign, though unusual, and recommended monitoring and periodic tests. Marge took her to more specialists. They did every kind of blood work and scan in their arsenal, and tried some new ones. Two projections of keratin and proteins that were not cutaneous was the first assessment. It was like saying to someone with flu symptoms, “your nose is running, and you seem to have a cough.” [Read more…] about Cleopatra, Scheherazade, & the Deerchild

The White Lies of Ivan the 24-Handed

A man had twenty four hands, and each of his hands held a secret or an answer. He lived in Russia in 1913, under the reign of the last Tsar. There were many such itinerant people then, and many made their living from fortune telling or as oracles of astrological research. Let’s call him Ivan, since it’s the most common man’s name in Russia. It’s like John in the US, and it’s pronounced “ee-VON” not “EYE-vun”. That’s important. [Read more…] about The White Lies of Ivan the 24-Handed

F*ck Your Day Job

Darryl held the cup of coffee over the edge of the fire escape, eying the two taxis below. Whichever one started to move first, that’s whose barista he would become.

Jill was late for work, and the whole call taxi thing was new to her. In New York, you didn’t really call unless you were out in the burbs. Maybe you summoned a cab with a cell phone app – you could do that. But she never heard of anyone calling from lower Manhattan. Chicago would be an adjustment – you could flag a taxi in Chicago, but not this far off the brown line. Damn, there was the horn, and her hair dryer wasn’t working. How are you supposed to operate like that, when everyone in the law office has a suit worth more than your last vacation? Especially if you ever wanted to clerk your way up the ladder without sleeping with it. [Read more…] about F*ck Your Day Job

Breaking Bone

A tongue is the most dangerous thing next to love. The Christians warn of the tongue devouring the speaker. The Hebrews say the steady, gentle pressure of a tongue breaks bone. And none of this comforted Jerald Parker, whose tongue was enormous by any standard estimation. When Jerry opened his mouth, girls cringed, so most of the time he didn’t. He was twenty three years old and had never been with a woman whose company he hadn’t paid for. Jerry had learned shyness from a young age – that was his Uncle, Roger, who had gotten him a “21st birthday roll” which Jerry had expected to be something you ate in place of cake, maybe with a couple of candles on it – one of those wax pairs of numerals representing his coming of age. [Read more…] about Breaking Bone

Hands that Listen

Racy Feder is the fastest sketch artist in the world. When the second tower fell in New York, she wasn’t taking a photograph, she was standing in the street, pencil in hand, making a sketch. When she was witness to two men making it out of the bank on 42nd Street with automatic weapons and sacks of Chase’s money, no one dared hold up their cell phones for a shot. Racy, sat calmly and efficiently with her knees tucked in, seemingly scribbling on a pad, and her not one but two sketches became the only globally syndicated images of the holdup. During the ice storm two years later, when cars were sliding out of control on I-87, Racy turned in drawings to her grandmother’s insurance company, made on the scene, showing the trajectory and position of each car in her line of sight, even before their own vehicle was struck. [Read more…] about Hands that Listen

Plaster

Down the hall there stands a wall;
its angle wrong, its tilt askew;
you’ll hit your head or scuff your shoe;
but if you’re dead, you go right through.

Jamie was only seven, but even at seven he could see the door was just a distraction – a fabrication for the eyes, which is where most people kept their minds. But Jamie’s mind was where it should have been – that is to say, everywhere. [Read more…] about Plaster

Blind to the World (part 1)

Ten Barber is a basket of disasters. He falls asleep at inconvenient times, mostly whenever he’s comfortable, but has insomnia that keeps him awake during all the appropriate hours of slumber. He speaks word salad gibberish when he’s *not* nervous, and is barely audible when he is. Worst of all, he continually sees things that are out of place, oddly juxtaposed, or just mismatched and can’t stop himself from trumpeting these observations with crystal clarity. No word salad there. Ten Barber makes friends like a teenager makes love – for five minutes at a time, but as often as you like. Ten is 25-ish – he says 25-ish when anyone asks, because Ten can’t seem to remember specifics about himself or his personal life. He hasn’t got a personal life, as far as he knows. [Read more…] about Blind to the World (part 1)

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