Airport concourses are infinity. The hallways that extend forever. Friendly and generic but unfamiliar and uncomfortable terrain. There are no colors so that they don’t offend. Any color is tastefully discrete – – a hidden accent. The accents here are orange on a greyish beige. They favor wide ramps with slim inclines instead of stairs. […]
Industrial room. Very end-of-Terminator style. Very Empire Strikes Back Bespin mining colony. The room seems to go on without limits in all directions but invokes acute claustraphobia because of the crowded machinery. Robot arms swing wildly. Zero gravity. Darth Vader seems to be the only object unaffected by the zero-g. His light saber glowing a […]
The classroom is my 5th grade classroom. But the subject matter is very 9-thru-12. I’m seated way in the back (and I know I got their late, too). Classroom tensions are high. School tensions are high. The guy seated next to me keeps trying to whisper to me about how far behind he is on […]
They kept coming. They were on their way in. Swarming over the lines. We were just children. And the commander kept yelling to Keep Those Shells Coming. So we worked in threes. One to turn the crank. One to hold the pencil. The other to take the too-thick sharpened stub to the gunners.
I’m at a small conference for technologies in renewable energy. It’s pretty standard fare for a convention center: drab, cool greys and warm beige tones, upholstery that is neither itchy nor comfortable, collapsable metal legs on tables and chairs. I’m here with a student contingent — all these faces that I recognize from high school […]
posted way after the fact: I knew something was horribly wrong because of all the rope. More specifically, it was the rapelling and the rope. The part that was supposed to be training came in dream-like flashes within the dream. (Meta-dreaming? I don’t know.) Tom Ridge featured all too prominently in those early flashing portions. […]
There was an infinite row of sexless clones at spare computer terminals all entering commands into a mysql prompt. Except that it was always secure text entry, all the time. The screens looked like: **************** They all had shaved heads except me. I had my hair. This one guy leaned over to tell me that […]
He’d been acting funny all day. The office was the office but different. Different equipment. Differ layout. Different furniture. Different building. Different town. But somehow only I know that the setting is wrong. Something was different with his attitude too. The same laid-back perhaps even pacifist dude he’s always been but hiding something. And maybe […]
Alternate childhood. Something about separated (divorced?) parents. Mostly I stay with my dad (who looks nothing like my really real dad — this guy has a construction mustache and is bigger in the shoulders). And he loves me (which is good) but he’s selfish and something of a child himself. He doesn’t have much money […]
Mom & Dad wrote a memoir. And in it, there is a detailed description about their first place. They describe it as a ‘two-room efficiency without the second room’. Their description continues to elaborate on how there was a single bedroom crowded with a too-small bed and a too-small dresser and a too-large sink and […]