An Open Letter to Undergraduate Admissions Officers Everywhere

I founded an out-of-school ultimate Frisbee club that recently hosted two very successful tournaments (one of which raised nearly two hundred dollars to build wells in Africa), and I serve as a captain for the in-school club. I was historian for my marching band in tenth and eleventh grade, and now I’m vice-president. I was also a section leader during my junior and senior years. I’m in the Tri-M Music Honors Society, and, out of school, I organize and MC for group of student musicians that perform monthly at local nursing homes. I was recently promoted from JV to varsity on the Academic Competition team. I’ve been in Model UN for three years. I play club squash for the school and percussion in the pit orchestra during the musical (this year it’s “Into the Woods”). I regularly update a creative writing and photography blog (talleyrandbanana.blogspot.com) and am currently working on a full-length screenplay tentatively titled "FOOTAGE". This summer I did daily clerical work for a family law firm a few minutes away from my house, and the summer before that I interned for a political campaign and taught piano at a homeless shelter. I sing in and accompany my school’s chorus (for which I received a Service and Leadership award in tenth grade), and I arrange music for the “Voice Males”, an all-male a capella group I perform with. I’m an active member in my school’s National Honors Society, I play chess every now and then, and I can operate most two-axel motor vehicles without terrible difficulty. On a good day, without much wind, I can pull an ultimate disc seventy yards or run a mile in eight minutes, but not at the same time (sorry). Last night I won a family game of Scrabble because my mom didn’t play her Z and so she lost ten points when I finished playing all of my tiles. Regrettably, I’ve never measured my vertical leap, but I’m told it’s probably not bad for someone of my height, which is five feet seven inches (in case you were wondering).

In Brief Defense of Summer

It is a poor night for this sort of thing. Three days, and you could be convinced without issue - the snow would be dirty and gray and sparse and the afternoon would be far too bright to be in love with the season - but tonight I am reminded of something that has troubled me for some time now: there is nothing pretty about summer.

Fall has leaves and spring has flowers and if you will look out the window you will see what is to love about winter, clogging up our transportation and knocking out our power and looking so gosh-darned attractive while doing it. Winter has Christmas carols and mittens; summer has sweat and sunburn. It's a frustrating idea for someone who doesn't like running in the cold.

But while winter may be the perfect time for hibernation, for introspection, I maintain that summer is a time for growth: for flings and floats and forehands. Winter is a time for romance and precision; summer is a time for sand and energy. Winter is ridged and varied, like those endless mountain peaks that stretch high into the icy fogs, but summer is flat, plain (plane). You can see for twelve miles in any direction, and the possibilities are endless.

Also, Pumpkin Scones!

I want to say publicly I am thankful for all of you.

Written August 29, Recovered, Uncut

Late at night, he contemplates his upwind hucking abilities and writes about himself in the third-person, shirtless, with that vaguely sweaty feeling typical of late August. The end of summer has always made him feel poetic, and, for him, there can be no finer subject to dwell on than that of his own wretched existence.

Of late, his forehand has been suffering - the result of too many low-release outside-in throws that scrape down hard on the broiling parking lot asphalt. He wonders if he will never again throw the pass like he did a month ago: twenty yards through traffic and his receiver didn't have to move an inch. Even his backhand has been failing him these days. His friend showed him a new grip, and now he doesn't know what to believe. Recently, it's all been up in the air.

The End Was So Close

Something big is coming, and it is footage.

Alternatives

Around It

Here is the thing:

In frisbee, there is always a way around it.

Look, here is the thing:

There are so many things that are just in the way that are directly between where we are and where we want to be and they manifest themselves in so many ways, and the primary issue is that there is no way around it: a breakup, or a breakdown, or a breakdancing competition - obstacles that are unavoidable.

Sometimes it is important to imagine these sorts of things as brick walls built across the interstate of life, the sort of thing you have to get out of your car to chip away at because there is no way around it (please bear with me, we are so close), and it takes a while depending on what sort of a hammer you have or perhaps how big the wall is, and here it comes, look, sorry.

Here is the thing:

I have liked playing frisbee for a long time but I fell in love when I realized there is always a way around it. Step out, get low, aim for the cones, never huck it to the middle third of the field, lead your cutter, be chilly, look off, fake, fake, fake. The defense is fronting the stack, so curl it around them. Tilt your forehand up, outside-in. Let the deep cutter run it down like she's greeting an old friend from high school. Nothing is in your way if you know what you're doing.

In frisbee, there is always a way around it.

Dancers

The Gentlest of Crimes (Remixed)

He makes a break for it without realizing how many of them are watching - quick, sharp, and in it for the blood.

On the ground, Ignacio covers his eyes. They are everywhere, and it is late.

The Gentlest of Crimes

His associate ducks his head suddenly, averting his eyes, grimacing, and her friend realizes the trick too late - the card is up; the dice are down.

And so it goes: Carolyn stares at her own name, gripped nervously in the worn hands of a boy she thought was her friend.

Mist

The Bell Whisperer (Edit)

His name was Alex or Alec or something, and he had red hair and freckles and he was a bell whisperer. I heard it from a friend, or my brother, perhaps, or someone in his section was in my SAT class or had a sister that went to my synagogue. You've heard it before too, little stories about how there was this crazy kid who was sick at the bells.

The bells were the ones you forgot when you were listing all the instruments in the marching band, even though they're bright and clear and you can hear them from the stands, which is to say you hear the music they're playing and you can probably identify which instrument is playing it, but you call them xylophones even though xylophones are actually made of wood and these are bells and bells are metal. Alex might have called them xylophones too, because even though he was the bell whisperer he was still a high school kid who rarely cared to distinguish between pitched percussion. I think there was a kid in his section who got angry when you called them xylophones, but the point of this story is more about the bell whisperer, and he didn't care what you called them.

He didn't know how to read music - this is my favorite part - he could just hear songs and know how to play them and he aced his music theory exam without even taking the course and he was called the bell whisperer because he heard the bells talk and he knew what was wrong with them and because during his freshman year he saved someone's life during a parade using a bell set and also he could fix them regardless of the problem. Whether a note was coming loose or a bracket was falling off and the bells were about to fall and the harness was about to crack he knew beforehand and he took the set and walked it back to the band room and fixed it and was back on the field before the number was done, and if he didn't have a screwdriver he couldn't fix the bells because even though he was a bell whisperer he couldn't just fix things that were broken without a screwdriver, so when he didn't have a screwdriver he would just march with the broken set and tell it not to break and it wouldn't, and the kid who got annoyed when you called the bells the xylophones just shook his head and laughed and said something about how good the bell whisperer was at what he did.

He had a black hat that had some acronym on it and no one knew what the acronym stood for and he had red hair that was really more orange and he had freckles all over the place and because of that you called him a ginger kid, but he didn't mind so much. He called himself a ginger kid, but this is less about how he was called a ginger kid and more about how he was called the bell whisperer, and the reason he was called the bell whisperer was because he could fix anything that was wrong with the bells and one year he saved someone's life during a parade because he knew the bells were about to get damaged and damaged bad and so he told his section leaders to put the bells up and they looked at him weird but he told them something was about to happen and so they did.

His name was Alex or Alec, one or the other, and he was the bell whisperer and also a ginger kid, and he had friends that were ginger kids and he was the funniest person you ever knew, or maybe the funniest person I ever knew, or maybe just the funniest person anyone in the whole world ever knew, and he was called a ginger kid because he had freckles and orange hair but he was called the bell whisperer because he knew when the bells were going to break and because he knew in ninth grade when the bells were going to break and so he told everyone to put their bells up and the police officer who showed his gun to that kid got fired like the nine millimeter pistol that should have been in its holster and the newspapers said it missed, but they were wrong, it hit the quiet sophomore girl with the pretty hair but she was fine because for some reason her bells were up even though the band was supposed to be playing and the bullet dinged the e flat that was right in front of her heart and bounced off.

He had freckles on his arms and a black hat and his name was Alex, as far as I can recall, or as far as you can recall, and he was the bell whisperer, which is good work if you can get it.

Everything Was Burning

Jesse says he woke up and everything was burning, but it is not the truth.

He sits up late at night and hopes he dreamed the whole thing, reading over the last note she wrote on facebook, wondering what woke him up because the fact is he was awake.

They asked him what happened, and he says he woke up and everything was burning. That is in the newspaper.

It was a moment.

He caught a glimpse of the plates in front of him, something with an L and a 4, and then he saw her face, which was smiling. Her eyes switched from his to the window behind him, smile still lost on her face. The book on tape was skipping. His dad punched the radio.

Late nights, he sits in front of the computer, missing her, wondering what woke him up.

Ring a Bell

Ball Golf

1 - Day - Strip Mall Parking Lot

Summer, around noon. A Wednesday. In a strip mall parking lot, the film crew sets up. They pull their boom mic out of the back of a minivan. The camera is handheld and shaky. Muffled taps are heard as the microphone is set up.

DIRECTOR (V.O.)
Test, test. Are we good?

CAMERAMAN (V.O.)
Yeah, I hear you. Should I be recordin-

2 - Day - Int. Al's Burgers

Inside Al's Burgers, the director is setting up his shot. The viewer gets the idea that this was supposed to be cut. KEVIN stands by nervously observing. He wears a gray t-shirt with "Ball Golf" written in large letters and a picture of a golf ball rolling into the cup. As the crew sets up, the camera catches occasional glimpses of the restaurant - a mildly-lit burger joint.

DIRECTOR (V.O.)
I think we want the white in the background, right?

CAMERAMAN (V.O.)
Yeah that'll look good.

Quick cut to a few minutes later. The camera is no longer shaking now that it's been mounted on a tripod. KEVIN is seated in a chair in front of the camera. Behind him is an all white wall of the restaurant, with a small corner of a painting poking in.

KEVIN looks behind the camera to the DIRECTOR, who mumbles a question unintelligible to the microphone from offscreen. KEVIN answers.

KEVIN
(repeating the question) Where are we? We're at The Ball Golf Superstore!

Another muffled question from the DIRECTOR.

KEVIN
Well, yes, technically we're at Al's Burgers. But this location is also the site of the first ever ball golf superstore.

As KEVIN continues to answer the question in voice over, cut to the exterior of Al's Burgers. The restaurant is in a small strip mall. Zoom in on the Al's Sign. Next to it is a small handwritten sign on cardboard: "Ball Golf Superstore".

KEVIN
We sell everything you need to play ball golf. We sell, uh, the clubs, the balls, practice cups. Stuff like that.

DIRECTOR (off-screen, muffled)
The shirt?

KEVIN
What?

DIRECTOR (slightly louder)
Do you sell the shirts too?

KEVIN
(looking down at his shirt, laughing) Oh yeah. My girlfriend designed this for Ball Golf. It's um, it's really cool. We've sold like 30 already.

There is an awkward pause as KEVIN stares and smiles at the camera, then looks over at the DIRECTOR, then back at the camera.

Cut to black. Countdown sequence rolls, and then:

3 - Day - The Ball Golf Course

Wide shot of the ball golf course from the shaky, hand held camera. It is a warm, sunny day. The course is small, and there are numerous trees around. All those playing golf are dressed in basketball or cargo shirts and t-shirts. A few couples are out playing together, but one of these couples are throwing basketballs instead of hitting normal golfballs. A family is playing with tennis balls and hitting them with bats, swung golf style. KEVIN and some of the workers from Al's are playing with regular golf equipment.

The title pops up on the screen in white letters: "BALL GOLF".

It disappears.

Cut to a shot of KEVIN and his friends as they play. They each hold two clubs each: a wedge and a putter. None of the equipment looks to be particularly high-end. MATT, one of KEVIN's friends, hits his ball with his iron. It goes about 30 yards before landing near a hole. The guys cheer.

4 - Day - Golf Course, MATT's Interview

As MATT is being interviewed, KEVIN and his friends continue playing ball golf in the background. On screen, MATT's name fades up, with "Ball Golf Enthusiast" under it. MATT is responding to a question that has already been asked.

MATT
The concept of ball golf is just like regular golf, except instead of throwing a disc into the cage, you're trying to get this ball (holding a golf ball up) into one of those little holes you see around the course.

DIRECTOR
And how do the sticks work?

MATT
Well the sticks are really called "clubs" by us ballthusiasts (he chuckles nervously at his joke). When ball golf was starting out, clubs weren't being used. We just, like, we threw the balls as far as we could. But the founders realized that they were being limited by the idea of throwing, so they changed throwing the ball to hitting the ball with the club. And just how in normal golf you have your drivers and your irons and your putters, we have our different clubs for different shots.

DIRECTOR
So what are the major differences?

MATT continues in voice-over, with footage from other sources playing over top.

MATT (V.O.)
Well, you've seen a golf tournament. Everyone's so dressed up, and the players are all so preppy and professional.

First, we see a professional golf tournament. Caddies carry a backpack full of many discs of various sizes just as a caddy would carry a golf club bag. The tournament takes place on a golf course - long, well-mowed fairways, greens, sand traps, etc. There are many spectators, and everyone is dressed up. In the corner of the screen, there is a disclaimer: "Footage Courtesy of PGA".

MATT (without having paused, V.O.)
It's the only sport with a dress code! With ball golf, you don't need to belong to some fancy country club to play, and you don't need lots of money or stuff like that. They carry like 14 discs or something. The pros with us use, like, three clubs. But you don't need them. You can just play with basketballs or baseballs or whatever you want and just land them on top of the hole. I know when I started my friend and I played with ping pong balls. We got like 30s on all the holes.

On screen: A still photo of a YOUNGER MATT and his FRIEND. MATT is hitting a ping pong ball as far as he can in a field outside.

5 - Day - Ball Golf Course

Cut back to the ball golf course, where the young couple playing with basketballs is seen playing a hole. They are laughing and enjoying themselves.

6 - Day - Ball Golf Course, COUPLE's Interview

The COUPLE is being interviewed - JACK and ELLIE. Their names pop up on the screen without titles.

JACK
Well, I just heard from a friend it was an inexpensive dating idea. Ellie and I came out for the first time a few months ago.

ELLIE
Yeah, it's super fun, and, like, totally cheap. With regular golf you need all those discs and everything, but with this we just throw the basketballs.

DIRECTOR (off-screen, muffled)
What's your best score?

ELLIE (looking to JACK)
Well...

JACK (simultaneously)
Well, it's tricky with just throwing, but I once almost broke 100 for these nine holes.

7 - Day - Ext. Al's Burgers

Establishing shot of Al's. A car drives by.

8 - Day - Int. Al's Burgers

KEVIN's interview.

KEVIN
I think the future's pretty bright for Ball Golf. The PBGA is saying we've got-

The DIRECTOR gives a muffled interruption.

KEVIN
What?

The DIRECTOR says something.

KEVIN
Oh that's "Professional Ball Golf Association". Anyway they're reporting something like two hundred and fifty courses in the United States currently, and with the economy the way it is I'm thinking people are going to be looking for cheaper sports. Golf is just too expensive for most people. We may see five hundred ball golf courses in two years!

DIRECTORS (off-screen, muffled)
Any last words to our audience?

KEVIN
(thinking) Well, sure. I mean, yeah. I just want to tell everyone out there that ball golf is seriously growing, and it's such a fun-

AL (yelling from off-screen)
Kevin, you're in the way of customers.

KEVIN
Oh, sorry.

KEVIN stands up and tries to keep talking. The camera gets picked up as well, and it is suddenly back to shaky and awkward. A CUSTOMER walks in front of the camera to order a burger across the counter. The DIRECTOR tries to get him to move, but the CUSTOMER is confused. Someone in the back yells "ORDER UP", and ANOTHER CUSTOMER moves to get his order. The camera turns away from the protesting KEVIN, and then cut to black.

Credits Roll.

End.

A Clarification

There was a misunderstanding. I have no plans to stop blogging at any time in the future. My last post was just some random sentence I was thinking about because I was feeling weary about how I hadn't posted in a while.

Also, This:

As his most recent post moves further into the distance, our hero grows weary.

Summer

Well

Moments of Terror and Inconvenience

Worth considering are those brief moments where life could end or at least where life is on the edge - when you throw a huck and you're not sure if it will turn over, when you don't know whether the bee will crawl down your shirt or will fly away, when the flag is spinning up in the air - and worth considering is the curious feeling of ecstasy and horror that sinks into your stomach like a parasite; worth considering also are those times where life is nothing but slightly under the ordinary: homework or dirt in your eye or stubbing your toe or any other species of mediocrity and ennui; worth considering is that at any given moment I'd rather get a sunburn than slam on the brakes when that deer jumps out at my car; worth considering is that the world could explode tomorrow and what we're going to end up with is a big list of times we didn't make the layout or times we were afraid of hornets or times we would rather be at home with a piece of dirt in our eyes and that is concerning but mostly it is just worth considering.

Secrets to the Perfect Photograph

In June, photography major Finnegan James realized everyone in the whole world is faking it.

It happened at a museum downtown, where he accidentally wandered into through a door he wasn't supposed to go through, and then, after he left, witnessed a guard lecturing an obvious tourist who tried to sneak in to the same room.

That night, he scribbled it into his moleskin - "secrets to the perfect photograph: get the angle. look like you know what you're doing."

Finn tried it out a few weeks later, when the president was in town for a visit. Without a sideways glance, he strode confidently onstage, lifted up his camera, and snapped a few quick frames.

They ran in the next day's paper - front cover.

Two months later, he had quit his filing job was and was freelancing for most major U.S. papers and a few overseas. The competition couldn't figure him out - a rookie photographer fresh out of school with a knack for getting within two feet of pro quarterbacks and world-famous vibraphonists.

With the money pouring in, Finn began taking advantage of other situations. He stole drinks at the pub simply by coolly hopping over the bar and snagging a beer. He met famous people all over the world by looking more important than their assistants. He touched paintings. He wandered into vaults. It's not that he knew more about anything than anyone else - he didn't - it's just that he knew that everyone else was as blind as he was. He knew that everyone was just looking for a person who knew what was going on.

And then one day, dawdling an hour or so away with his feet propped up on the pope's desk, he met another. A girl wandered in wearing an old t-shirt and jeans.

Finn had long learned that the best defense is a good offence. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to speak with the pope," the girl answered casually, walking over to the window, "what are you doing here?"

He responded. "Family emergency."

There was a brief pause, and then the two met eyes.

"How did you figure it out?"

"I strolled out of a Best Buy with eleven flatscreen televisions. How about you?"

"Museum accident."

"Oh, huh."

It got awkward pretty fast, so he made some excuse about being an astronaut and left a few minutes later. Sometimes he wishes he had asked her for a number.

A Pantoum for The Imperfect Layout

It was, in the end, just
for a disc, but
he loved it
so, once. He laid out

for a disc, but
it escaped his hand.
So once he laid out
but he missed. Because he dived too late,

it escaped his hand.
He loved it
but he missed because he dived too late.
It was, in the end, just.

All Gone

The ideas dried up. All of them.

We took longer going for words, at first. They hesitated on the tip of our tongue for just a little longer than we prefer. Time passed, though, and it got worse. Cars crashed because people forgot how to drive. Speeches petered out in the middle. Books stopped getting written. In the end, people's brains just stopped.

I don't know why the two of us were only ones left. I spotted him on the way back to my house, a few of my choicest friends in the car with me, mouths open, eyes wide. I could still make them eat, if I put the food right in their mouths and closed their jaw for them. He was walking back from the grocery store holding a few breads. He was surprised to see a car moving.

He did bio research for the city university, before everyone went off the air. We organized a system - he stayed in the lab all day while I brought him everything he needed: food, equipment, subjects to experiment on. I tried to stay out of the lab while he operated.

He never used anesthesia, and they never flinched.

And then, just as I had started pondering how long this whole thing might take, it was over. I came back from the chemistry building on campus with some glassware, and he was just sitting on the floor, smiling.

"What's the matter? Why aren't you working?"

"I don't... I can't think right now," he giggled.

I leaned down to his level and tried to breathe. "Listen man, you need to pull it together. I'm counting on you here."

He sat up, serious, and then let his face break into a stupid grin. "Sorry," he cooed, baby-voice style, "all gone."

Manganese

Scenes 10

One:
I am grinning in the car, but I do not tell you it is just because I am glad we are friends.

Two:
You tell me you are content with your life and I think it is because of the pizza steak hoagie you ate but really it is just because your everything is so great right then, and I come to the natural conclusion that you are right.

Three:
You should have called a pick but instead you just apologize for running into that guy.

The Kayak Bandits

Midnight outside the small Delaware city, on the bridge out of town that serves as an evacuation route for all those frequent blizzards that hit the border states. Ordinarily, you'd see the thoroughly patriotic youth of the area lighting illegal fireworks off on the beach a few miles away in preparation for the July 4th that isn't for two more days.

Tonight, though, they're calling for thunder.

A white station wagon pulls up on the bridge, its lights doused. A blonde-haired 19-year-old in a tight undershirt jumps out of the passenger side, bare toes curled against the asphalt, shorts flapping in the cool, rain-smelling breeze. In one quick motion, he hefts a small kayak tied to the roof of the car, tosses it two-handed over the side of the bridge, and dives shallowly after it into the swampy water below.

*****

Sixteen years ago, a tourist with a fanny pack is arguing with a manager who is considering retirement now more than ever.

"I'm calling the Better Business Bureau on your ass, buddy. They're on my speed dial just for pricks like you."

"Sir, please, we sell rain coats. I think that it's assumed-"

"Yeah, well, you know what happens when you assume? You make an-"

"Yes, yes, I've heard-"

"-ass out of-"

"You don't need to-"

"-you and me!"

There is a brief silence. The manager pointedly wipes a glob of saliva off of his eyelid.

"Twelve thousand dollars."

"What?"

A beat.

"While even the most idiotic simpleton in this goddamned state would be able to tell that this fishing boat is clearly part of a display advertising our products, I will sell it to you for twelve thousand dollars if you can get it out of this store without breaking a window."

The tourist looks a little flustered with his victory.

He waddles out to grab his checkbook.

*****

Fourteen Octobers later, a freshman cartography major is pouring over tide maps with her friend, one of those tall, wiry boys that does crew for the University.

"It's like, what, two times a year?" the boy asks. "I don't get this."

She leans over the chart. "If you could get two used cars a year, would you do it?"

"'Get'? Isn't it more like 'steal?'"

She ignores him, turning from the table to pick up a couple newspaper clippings from the floor.

"They lose them here," she points to the map, "during a storm. They end up wrecked here. If we could cut them off..." Her voice trails off as she drags a finger down the map.

She smiles.

*****

June - A high school boy in Oregon is saying goodbye to his first love.

She's an exchange student from Honduras that spent the year in the Midwest. He was in charge of showing her around, and, in between the million times he explained to her how to pronounce "Jell-O" and the giggling fits she had over the idea of microwaving peeps, they fell for each other.

"We'll see each other soon," he reassures her, brushing her tears away with his fingertips. She traces the lines on his arm.

Her voice breaks. "But how?"

"You can come down to the shore with us over the summer," he answers, trying to sound certain. "It'll be fun. My dad has a boat."

*****

Under the bridge, the blonde boy has untied the paddle from the kayak and is fighting the rising currents. The storm is raging now, and the boat should be coming any minute.

"I picked it up over the radio," the voice says over the radio and into his earpiece, "some kid got himself and his girlfriend swept overboard after he stole the family boat and didn't check the weather first."

"Are they okay?" the kayaker asks.

The answer comes back trying to sound casual. "What do I care?" Then: "yeah, they're both fine."

Under the bridge, the boy smiles. He snags a hook on the bridge's ceiling and allows the swift water to stretch his arm for him. He lights up.

"Alright, here we go," the voice says.

The boy tosses his cigarette and mutters something about bad timing as he pulls the rope from inside the kayak and treads water with his paddle.

Then it goes wrong.

The radio crackles back up. "It's too big, get out."

"What?"

"It's too big. Call it off. Get to the reeds."

The boy is confused, but he doesn't need telling twice. As he turns, though, the boat looms up. The voice was right. It's big, and it's overtaking him.

Outside of the bridge's cover, the rain is pouring like nothing else. He paddles like mad to get out, but he knows the fishing boat is coming too fast. The kayak won't hold up.

Then: squeaking.

The rain is still coming down, but the boat stopped. The girl up on the bridge hooked it with a pair of steel cables and tied it to the car's hitch.

Paddling to the side, the boy jumps out of the kayak and takes it in his left arm. He climbs up the side of the bridge, one-handed, in a way that can only mean he's done it a million times before.

He ties the kayak back on the roof as she swings the axe and severs the taught steel line, the force snapping the frayed end into the air.

They climb in the station wagon.

"We'll get it next time," she says, starting the car.

"Yeah," he answers, "plus, you've always got that cartography degree to fall back on."

Lighting illuminating the fishing boat's progress as it continues to surge now-uninterrupted down the river, the two drive off into the stormy summer horizon, unaware of the long series events that led to one fateful evening under the bridge out of town in a small Delaware city.

Gracefully

Ideas

The compilation of every sound that ever was, but especially the good ones, like rain (obviously), and sloppy snare drums and electric pianos and that popping sound that you get when you hit your hand on a PVS pipe; the rationing of exclamations marks, because, seriously; lexicography; retroyms; math; sentences in all capitals.

Spectacular (Perhaps)

The Equilibrium of Things - 3

On the first day, I turned on the highest sound there ever was and watched them go crazy, slicing off their ears into a pile, their smiles plastered with relief.

The Equilibrium of Things - 2

On the second day, it was decided that a big pile of ears is just too macabre a sight, and so the planes were loaded up and flew away to dispose of their cargo above the ocean.

As the day drew to a close, I told my men to fire their rockets, and the planes exploded into a million little bits, and the ears scattered down to earth, unhearing, unknowing, unfeeling.

Temperature

In summer, she loved him because of the way he thrived in the heat, like a weed - his hands built for gripping and his skin for sweating and his lips for smoking, so he could finish every day higher on the mountains than he started. His fingers were cold because of a circulation problem that slowed down his thinking like it was stuck behind a car that was always in a school zone, and she liked the way he touched her ears when he tucked her hair back; in summer, she relished every little shiver.

In winter, he was the one who loved her because winter is a time for precision, and he was a bright kid who just moved a little slower than everyone else, unless, of course, she was dragging him along by the toes that she had such an unusual tendency to crack against the coffee table. In winter, he prayed for heat waves, because he preferred sweating to thawing and because he didn't like seeing the way his breath looked in the cold air and so he loved her because he didn't get heat waves but the palms of her hands were enough to avoid freezing, anyway.

Scenes 9

One
I think there is something mystical about hands only bell players really get when they first realize they are playing without watching, when they realize their skin knows where the notes are, when they realize their wrists might be governed by a force they don't understand.

Two
Waking up early is my least favorite thing to do in the world, it is like, hey, you should wake up early so instead of burying yourself in a mountain of warm down and pillows you can be cold and tired, but when my alarm went off and I knew why it was earlier than usual that day I wasn't even a little bit upset about it.

Three
That bird was the stupidest bird in the whole world, but you still couldn't stop laughing.

The Equilibrium of Things

On the third day, I watched it rain ears.

At first, it was one or two - hollow thuds on the shredded tire playground floor - but soon they fell harder, a downpour, sending children screaming into their mothers' minivans, chased by a heavenly volley of bloody hearing organs. My umbrella tore to pieces in an instant.

As the world burned around me, I picked a particularly fleshy specimen up from the ground and marveled at just how easy it is to upset the equilibrium of things.

the sprite

in the distance, a choir of angels sings, as
you watch the hunter's rifle come off his shoulder,
up -
(he's practiced at this)
over,
his dog poised

his
feet set
barrel up to
eye level glasses
pushed out of the way
he takes aim and breathes and
caresses the trigger like the way you
touched me underneath my arm the last night we were
together

the angels have stopped singing

you watch the dog drag back a bloody pile of flesh
and robes
and wings

and you look at the hunter, who shoulders his rifle and
looks you in the eye and says,
with a shrug,

"gotta eat"

Guest Post 4 - Not Falling

At first, it wasn’t flying—it was more like not-falling.

He was walking down the steps when his foot stepped out into nothingness. He almost tripped, almost snatched his foot back, but instead, he took another step, tentatively, into the air. He stayed there, suspended over the concrete steps of his apartment building until slowly, he began to sink back down, landing softly on the pavement below.

It didn’t happen again that day, or that week even, although he waited for it, holding his breath every time he walked down a flight of stairs. When it did happen, suddenly, two weeks after the first time, he tried to move around. He floated to the roof of his building and landed, taking off again a minute later, completely in control.

And just like that, it became more than not-falling. It became flying, all on its own.

After that, he flew all the time. He flew to work, to the supermarket and back, to the library. The neighbors were startled at first, to be sure, but he lived in a small town, and people adjusted quickly. A few people tried to not-fall themselves, but just ended up with broken bones and scraped limbs. I’m sorry, he said. I don’t know why it’s just me. People were jealous, but he wasn’t selfish, and soon everyone realized how useful he could be, saving cats from trees, washing building windows. In fact, at the town fair, he took all the children flying with him. Just hold my hand tight, he said. Don’t fall, now.

--

It stopped as suddenly as it started.

One day, he was called to rescue a little boy from a tree, and when he got there, he just couldn’t leave the ground. He tried a couple of times, and then gave up. I don’t know, he said, and everyone was nice about it. Don’t worry, they said. Everyone has an off day.

It wasn’t just an off day, and, although he tried, he never flew again. Sometimes, walking down the stairs, he would not-fall, but it never lasted long, and after awhile, even that stopped too. The windows he had washed became dirty again, and the fire department became busy again, and as time went by, it became a fairy tale, told over and over again, sitting on the porch on a summer’s night.

Story By: Rachel
Photo By: Monica

Guest Post 3 - Cold

It was cold out on the football field.

I didn’t think about how cold it was at the time. I didn’t brace myself against it. I didn’t pull my jacket close to me or rub my arms or try to warm myself up. I didn’t hold anything close, because that was wrong. Or maybe I just didn’t register that I was cold at the time and I’m being a drama queen now because it’s easy to find metaphors and symbolism and every other goddamn literary device imaginable when you’re looking at the past. The past is a novel, which I guess makes the present Twitter or something. But, back to the weather.

In one respect, it wasn’t the worst kind of cold. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the late-December freeze, piercing my skin and chapping my lips and drawing tears from the corners of my eyes with the slightest breeze. It wasn’t the first chill, the first time in months that the prospect of wearing only short sleeves and flip-flops seems unreasonable, sending a weird shiver into the air that you feel for days on end. It had been relatively warm, if not sunny, all day, and now it was just cold enough and my clothes were just light enough that the only thing that would warm me back up was going inside or another body pressed against mine. And that was pretty shitty timing.

I shut my eyes and let my fingers spread out on the grass, which was also cold or wet or something. Either way, it was seeping into me. Into my skin and my hair and my mind, the cold that wouldn’t go away. It had been cold for months and months then. I didn’t remember much besides freezing after everything that had happened. Unless you count the snow, and that was only because I fell in it. It was cold, and it was dark, but the soft lights from inside the school and the floodlights from the parking lot shone just bright enough to blot out the stars. The school was full of people I knew and people who cared about me, people who would notice my absence and come looking for me once they realized that I had turned off my phone and run away twenty minutes after paying five dollars in quarters to get in. I should have gone back in. I should have never left in the first place. But the one person sitting at our table who would never care again had driven me away, and hell if I was coming back. I was going to lie down in the middle of that field on the grass, under the stars that I couldn’t see, in the cold that I couldn’t feel. And I was going to stay.

They found me after a little while and helped me up, looking like dark shadows with bright bulbs at their backs. They took me to the park as a sort of botched apology and let me take the blanket out of his car and wrap it around my shoulders.

I sat on the slide and looked up at the star-scarred sky until they found me again and took me home.

By: Ali

Guest Post 2 - Exceptions

It was an unspoken tradition that after every party during the summer we would all move out to the screened- in porch. The adults sat with their drinks, that they had been refilling since that afternoon. The kids ran out into the backyard to sneak a swim in the pool next door or catch the fireflies. It was calm and slow. These evenings were made of moments where that feeling creeps up on you and makes you think about where you are and what you are doing and how you will never forget this insignificant night. There will be a night like this a week from now and you will forget that one and the one after that, but you will never forget this one.

You won’t forget how your mom spent the whole day in the kitchen preparing a steak and then ended up making you go buy hamburger meat and hotdogs. Then one of the guests wrinkled their nose and the prospect of eating a hotdog and your mom put him in his place in less than a minute. You’ll remember why you are so glad you have your mom because you know she would do the same thing for you.

You won’t forget how nice the water felt as you and your sister and the boy next door sunk into the pool, hoping that the elderly couple that lived in the house would not wake up. There were races from each end of the pool to the other until you could not see. Then your sister got out because she was cold - it was just you and the boy from next door. While he was swimming, you could not stop thinking about how you have known him forever, but also how cute he has always been.

You won’t forget how the neighbor four houses down drank too much again and was telling stories that no one wanted to hear again. Her husband was trying to drink too much so that he could ignore the fact that everyone was staring about him. It did not work. Everyone was uncomfortable and he quietly shuffled her loose body down the steps of the porch and across the street.

You won’t forget how your aunt and cousin came to the party. She sat and talked to the other moms about her new stroller or something. As she talked with her fancy cocktail in hand her son struggled to open the door of the porch. He had been staring out of the screen for the past 20 minutes. His nose and cheek pressed up against the screen, giving him indents on his skin. All the little kids were running around with cans catching the fireflies. They were laughing and calling his name to come and join them, but he just stared. His mom told him no. You won’t forget how you showed him the hook that his mom had locked and how he reached up with his hands that barely knew what they were doing and pushed the hook out of its place. Then, with his head stuck staring at the open door, he grabbed the doorknob and pulled. His mom never noticed as he ran down the stone steps and into the yard. He did not look back at you and smile or say thank you. He just ran to go catch some fireflies.

That night when you were in bed listening to the parents clean up the kitchen, your hair was still wet from swimming, you had a jar of fireflies sitting on your nightstand, you had a plan to sneak into the pool tomorrow night with the boy next door and you thought to yourself that these are all the things that you will never forget but all the things that never mattered.

By: Meredith

Guest Post 1 - My Turn To Speak

It always happens like this. They have become the most important people in the world to me but they are strangers to whom I have nothing to say. Months of preparation and planning have been wasted and my only thought now is of escape, because soon it will be my turn to speak. I start to hope that perhaps I will have a heart attack, or a stroke, or be struck by lightning and then the ambulance will come and rush me out of the building, onto the street, to the hospital. Oh the sweet relief of being strapped to a gurney and hurried away! But that doesn’t happen and soon it will be my turn to speak.

It always happens like this. I force the panic aside; I know what I need to do. I need to forget myself and my fear and think about what I know and what I need these strangers to know, things that I need to tell them, things only I know. I start to get that good feeling: it's game day, it's time to play, it's time to get it together because I can, because I do, every time, always like this. It's my turn to speak and I know what I will say. I start, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury…"

By: My Mother

P.S. Happy mother's day, mom.

Prom

#3 in a series of 5. Collect them all!

It Would Have Been Easy

Having recently been told that he smelled like fall, he contemplates the mysteries of life on the drive home from the hospital and ultimately decides that everything is just a matter of compromise, a matter of picking what is easy or what is hard or what is right or what is left, because it would have been easy to swerve out of the truck's way when it tipped over and it would have been easy to put up with the abuse for the two more years he had left to put up with it, but suddenly he turned right instead of left and the dawning comprehension on his stepdad's face didn't have time to change. He wonders what it would have been, though, if the truck had taken a half-second longer to crush the passenger side to dust; would it have been easy - the anger that seemed to come so readily, the lip curl he knew so well? Or would it have been what was hard, what was right, would it have been an apology, a tiny, redeeming glance of remorse, just for a moment.

He stops at the accident intersection.

He had never stayed at a hospital overnight before last night, his roommate was a girl a year younger than him, and it goes like this: she wakes up in the middle of the night whispering to him about how scared she is about the surgery she has tomorrow and telling him she hates how the hospital smells, it smells like age, she says, but not the good kind of age that books smell like - hospitals smells like the bad kind of age - and it would have been easy not to say anything, to pretend he was asleep, but instead he rolls over, he looks her in her amber eyes, slick with tears and shining in the sterile moonlight that filters through the blinds of the third floor room, and he tells her that she has nice eyes and that he has never heard anyone describe smell like that, and she chokes out a smile, so he asks her what he smells like, and she tells him she can't tell from so far away, and so he gets up and stands next to her bed, she grabs his hand, pulls him next to her, and buries her face in his shoulder.

She breathes.

She says he smells like fall.

The light changes.

Intravenous

Your doctor had an unusual way of grinning.

You think about it as you lie in one of his examination rooms, biting absent-mindedly at your nail, a dark IV dripping into your arm. When it slurps away to nothing, the nurse replaces it.

The doctor said to wait and relax. The IV would kick in about an hour, and he'd be back then.

You nibble away at a little corner of your index finger and try to count ceiling tiles.

You think about the doctor's smile again. Something about it was vaguely sinister. He showed a lot of teeth.

You keep biting.

How many times has the nurse changed the bag now? Four? Five?

How long has it been?

A sharp snap wakes you up - you chewed off your entire nail. Your finger is killing you. Now that you think about it, though, everything hurts. Your heart is pounding. Your head feels like it's in a vice.

And then the blood comes.

It leaks out of your fingertip, slowly, thickly, like molasses, and, unbelievably, it's as black as night. Clots exposed, it stretches like gum before it breaks, splashing to the ground leisurely.

As you collapse to the floor, surrounded by mountains of empty IV bags, gasping for breath, you watch the the doctor stroll in, grinning.

After The Break-Up

Dave and Rachael broke up. It was messy.

After the break-up, they didn't make a huge effort to hide their mutual hatred. Dave was constantly bad-mouthing "that bitch," and, while Rachael publicly declared that they "were still friends," I wasn't buying that she "accidentally" sent his naked pictures to the whole school.

Two weeks later, I was on a two hour trip jammed into the back of Dave's Mini-Cooper, Darlene.

Rachael was sitting shotgun.

It turns out that before Rachael and Dave's falling out, they had bought four concert tickets for a show in Buffalo. I guess they were planning on a double date or something. My best friend Jon was supposed to be coming too, but he canceled right before we were leaving. Something about his mom dying.

Rat bastard.

Dave and Rachael weren't the kind of couple that would avoid each other after the break-up. They still sat next to each other in German, their cute smiles replaced by burning glares of hatred that would undoubtedly start fires should they be focused with a magnifying glass. They didn't even change the duet they were singing for the school recital. "Falling For You" comes off differently when one of the performers is actually pushed off the stage.

And so here I was, an unfortunate victim of fate and friendship, stuck in the back of a car with two teenagers who hated each other.

I thought about the pros and cons of a tractor trailer hitting the car.

"So," said Rachael.

I mean I would die, obviously.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

So it would probably be about a break even.

Conversations Destined to End in Silence

One"Can I borrow a pencil?"

"Sure, but it doesn't have an eraser."

"That's okay - I NEVER MAKE MISTAKES."

Two"What do you want to do?"

"I dunno. I could laugh at you."

"Alright."

"Ha."

Three"I wish there was someone else in this room with me."

I'll Change for You

I met a girl on a bet.

I told her my name was Theodore, and that I had eleven cats and all of them were named Oliver. I said I played ukulele. I said I once accidentally killed another kid in my karate class with nunchucks because that's just how good I am.

She was getting off the bus and suddenly I didn't want to leave, so I told her I lived around here and asked if she wanted to get something to eat. She suggested sushi; I said I was allergic. We got tacos instead.

When I told my friends about it I pretended I thought it was funny.

She sat on my floor and ate Reese's Pieces while I painted the apartment I had bought in the area I got off the bus on that first day - I said I was redecorating. She told me she wished she was closer with her sister. She told me she liked the way my sweatshirts smelled. I told her all of my cats had mysteriously been killed by the same disease.

We were snuggled up on her couch, watching what she thought was my favorite movie and eating what she thought was my favorite food, and she asked me why I had never played ukulele for her. My heart sped up. I told her my ukulele was broken, and then I rushed to the store and bought one.

Four days later I played her the song I had pieced together from instructional youtube videos, and when I was done she told me she loved me. Staring her in the eye, my mouth cracked into a tiny smile, I told her I loved her too.

It was the first thing I said to her that wasn't a lie.

Winter

Wonder

Our music department takes a five-day-long trip every other spring to an exotic location, and this year it was Disney World. It was late at night - 12:30, maybe. I was outside my third-floor room, leaning against the railing in a manner I hoped was casual and hoping my girlfriend would glance out her window and think about how cool I looked (I didn't look cool).

The sprinklers had turned on, and I closed my eyes for the sounds around me - the splashing from the curiously piano-shaped pool in the distance, the muffled laughs of students behind closed motel doors. The air was sweet and damp; the wind light and warm.

I heard a door slam from the first floor and opened my eyes in time to see an elderly woman toddling gently onto the lawn, clutching a water bottle. She walked up to one of the sprinklers on the lawn, glanced around, gave it a kick, and rushed back into her room. The sprinkler erupted immediately into a geyser, continuously shooting a barrage of water straight up about five feet.

As I stood out on the balcony that evening, the sole witness to a dumbfounding act of defiance, thinking about my marvelous girlfriend and hilarious roommates, quietly watching a broken sprinkler saturate the grass around it and turn the neighboring sidewalk into a muddy river, I couldn't help but stare up at the sky and marvel at my life.