I seem to do this sort of thing on weekends. haiku, drabbles, etc

sakura lace veil
low clouds, rain, sips of coffee
seattle springtime

---

Aleckzandra was tall and thin with a patrician nose and a slight limp: she had a brass-handled cane that tapped its own rhythm imperiously on the tiles. Among the students it was rumored she was a lesbian, and unlike most rumors that circulated around university halls, that happened to be true. Her partner was a welder who looked like a cross between Mae West and Marilyn Monroe, whose Georgia accent trailed warmth and gardenias through the grey New York sky.

---

Nami likes books. I enjoy reading, but am content to do it through the newsfeeds and displays, which are ubiquitous now. Since the invention of paper crystal, news flows over the curving sides of buildings and ripples under your feet as you walk like salmon scales flashing in a running stream. Knowledge is fluid: I feel no need to hold it between hands.

But for Nami, we go to the Old Town where the booksellers hoard their vaults of words. Jimbocho is disconnected from the screens and even among people I feel strangely afloat.

Nami takes my hand, anchors me, and we enter the shop. It smells of ink and paper, glue and yesterdays.

---

Fabian pointed a seaweed-salad-laden chopstick at him. "You need to get laid."

"That's your solution to everything." Anthony replied tartly. "Sex. Some people want more from a relationship than just the mutual exchange of sweat."

"Sex and food. And television, and extreme sports, and art. I like to think of life as a kind of smorgasboard of pleasures."

"You like to think of life as an all-you-can-eat buffet, you pig."

"I had a boyfriend once - we fucked at an all-you-can-eat-buffet."

"I'm sure you came up with some great uses for salad dressing."

"Well, actually - "

"You know what? I don't care."

mind over matter

The Donnelly family has always had its share of strange folk.

There was Great-Aunt Maeve who was born with a caul and pulled from the womb tangled in the blue body of her own twin. A lot of people claimed they had the second sight but Maeve actually did: she had a gateway into the world beyond, because of the dead twin, you see. Her hair turned white on her thirteenth birthday. She spoke in tongues and walked the hills at night with her face as pale as her nightgown, and not a few people said that a visit from Maeve Donnelly was nearly bad as one from the devil himself. She sat up straight in bed the night of her thirty-ninth birthday, screamed as though the hounds of hell were after her and dropped dead like a stone.

And then there was Uncle James Donnelly, who cheated death in his fishing boat so many times there was tell he'd sold his soul for eternal life. He lived to be a hundred and two, a bachelor until the end, and rarely spoke: but his laugh was enough to chill a strong man to the marrow. He owned a huge black dog that had feet the size of a bear: they'd run together, both howling at the moon.

Martin Donnelly (third cousin) could tell a man the hour of his death and be right to the minute: Eve Donnelly (Maeve's half-deaf niece) claimed to have an eye in the palm of her withered hand and read marked bible verses through a locked metal box just by putting her palm on the lid.

So no one really took much notice when Bridget Donnelly's second boy changed a glass of water into a glass of shandy that wasn't half bad, and from there to a glass of decent stout; or could turn a dead horse into a working car with little more than a splitting headache afterwards.

Donnellys were strange folk, after all.

oooh, shiny! death!

The Routine Autopsy: A Guide for Writers.

Because there's like, at least twenty people on my list that might want it.

twits

( all back here. )