It was the best of times; and it was the worst of tacos. An endless cycle; ebb and flow, wax and wane. Beans and cheese. Sour cream and salsa. Double and dip.
Again and again, we all had naught to do but watch as our joys came to us, then inevitably slipped away.
In this, we are all lamenters; grievers; mourners. We all wail and gnash at the bitter draught we must drink. The loss of the seasonal specials.
I am not the voice of my generation
and yet, I am a voice of my generation
The door was locked. Of course, it was. It would have been a disappointment if we could waltz right in. After all, we had spent centuries on our quest for this door. Our entire conscious lives dedicated to this very moment.
We stood spellbound for a few moments, watching the fluid motion of the carvings on the ancient steel door. The serpent dancing around the lock shimmered its warning. The carvings of men and women in love and in combat glittered and shone. They were enacting stories as old as time. They were also offering hints to the combination of pictograms which would open the door. Adam and I turned to look at each other. Now that we were so close, all our doubts had resurfaced.
The old woman in the apartment across the hall always called me “Sam,” but Sam wasn’t my name. My name was Joe. But I didn’t correct her. At first it was out of embarrassment, but then I began to see humor in it. Guests would come by and she would call me “Sam” and I would explain the joke and we’d laugh about it.
But then later, after awhile, I began to think that maybe she had it right. Maybe I really was a “Sam.” I thought that maybe I was given the wrong name at birth, that perhaps there had been some kind of crazy, cosmic mix up.
During the stormy night under the starless heavens, thunder and lighting reigned the sky. Bolts of violent light blasted through the heaven like the raptures of human veins. Stiff uprooted trees lay dead in the trembling grass, frail huts shivered at the sound of the cracking fury and the living buried themselves from the rage. This was the night when Gods cracked their whips at the sins of men and the winds, full of evil, haunted the scattered villages. It was a violent and tempestuous night, ordered to conceal the secret birth.
Peter changed into his pyjamas, brushed his teeth, shaved and settled in front of his computer for the Friday night whole-family video call that Mary had started when the lockdown began, ‘to keep their collective spirits up’. She lived two streets away with her husband and twin daughters. David dialled in from Napa Valley. Between Annie’s drawings, Katie’s handstands and David’s virtual tours of his vineyard, they didn’t get much talking done, which suited Peter just fine.
The only good thing about these calls was that he didn’t have to make eye contact. If he pasted a benign smile on his face and stared somewhere in the proximity of the camera, he could get through the whole call analysing his own receding hair line. It helped that Olivia preferred to dial in from her own phone from her own room.
You never liked me. I don’t know why. You always discouraged and demeaned me at every opportunity, and because of that I’ve never been open to improving the situation. We never confronted the problem, just put it on the back burner to simmer away for years.
Picture this.
Friend A is from Poland. You met when he briefly studied in your university. He has blond hair, too long to be due to negligence, too short to be tied back. He is relaxed and has a kind of vulnerability to him that he is happy to expose. This makes him extremely easy to be around. You are always quick to let your guard down around him, and that has been the basis of your friendship.
