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Last week I was taking it easy, lounging on my bed and reading a book when my husband Jordan came in. Our conversation went as follows:
Jordan: "What did you say?"
Bre: "I didn't say anything."
Jordan: "Yeah, you did. You said something and then I said 'what?' and then you said 'nothing!'"
Bre: "No, I've been sitting here reading, I haven't said a thing."
It grew
Still she was able to see him
Lying on the other side
Close enough
To sometimes touch
They'd reach across
And hold hands
Till the gusts blew strong
And broke their grip
Each day she'd feel
More rocks crumble beneath her
And fall from the ledge
My lips are thin. My eyes are blue.
"Mama, what should I do with my life?" I ask my mother, the teacher.
My mom says, "Do anything, but don't be a teacher."
"Really?"
"Be a hooker. Don't be a teacher."
"O.K."
She says, "Don't get married. Have kids, but don't get married."
My hands are small. My breasts are large.
The year was 1971, Richard Nixon was president, ‘Attica’ was a chant, The Weather Men blew things up, Alan Shepard hit a golf ball miles on the moon and felt totally cool, and Hamburgers got a helper! Let’s see… We also had the Pentagon Papers, we’re All in the Family and I was a meathead, Woody made us all Bananas, Lennon asked us to Imagine, a fiddler fiddled on a roof, The Vietnam war raged and I was drafted.
When I tell people I used to be homeless I always get attacked with questions. The most popular is “what was the worst part?”. The answer? There are no bathrooms. If you have to take a crap you have to search high and low for a place that doesn't care that you'll never buy something from them.
You probably don't realize how good you have it until you have to frantically search for a public bathroom at three in the morning. Those bathrooms were a treasure cove. The best part is that after you did your thing you could use the sink to take a "whores bath", basically a sponge bath using the tiny amount of soap in the dispenser. You could also wash your change of clothes (which were kept secure in your backpack of course). All this was made even more interesting because I have OCD and being clean is the most important thing in the world to me.
After people get bored of the standard homeless questions I always get this one: what do you remember most about being homeless? This is also easy to answer. I remember the day I scammed a scammer.
Elena Beloff, a graduate of the New School University where she had studied film production, wanted to make movies since she was a little girl in her hometown in Tatarstan, Russia. When she was in high school she came to the USA as an exchange student and returned later to pursue her dreams. "Filmmaking is my passion. I chose it because I can communicate my vision, beliefs and love for art through film."
With the action genre being a little bit hit and miss over the last decade, the film Expendables will remind everyone what a true action movie is all about. We have all recently grown accustom to the more psychological action hero like Jason Bourne with his more laid back incognito type attitude, or the more over the top impossible traits of fantasy superhero or magical protagonists.
I was almost asleep when the phone calls started.
"Hello?" I asked. The line would go dead. A minute later, it would ring again.
I could see on the caller ID that it was the woman from upstairs. Her name was Ida Nelly and she weighed over 400 pounds. Sometimes when she walked around, our apartment would shake. Dave and I pretended not to mind. It was the polite thing to do.
"Another back-to-back mission! What happened to the Regulations' mandated five-minute rest, debrief, re-brief and all that good stuff? I am not a machine, I am a Mzzit, I need rest! And what about all the other squadron pilots, the brown nosers! Yessir, yessir! Have them fly back-to-back missions!"
Torl took a deep breath and relaxed a bit at the bio-controls, sipping refreshing Spank gratefully while programming the bio-zoid to maintain same course at current speed and altitude for two seconds.
Much needed rest. Dangerous but within tolerances of the current situation. Torl shut down most of his eyes tiredly, leaving just a few open to scan the instruments and any dangers ahead. And dangers there were, to be sure, somewhere ahead. In Quadrant ZZX.
"Gran'pa Baltazar, tell us a story! Gran'pa Baltazar tell us a story!" the little ones nagged shrilly, tugging on the old man's tunic.
"Well, alright, my little pigeons, gather around" old Baltazar eyed the small fry affectionately. His four little grand children, all daughter's stock, nestled excitedly at his feet by the fire in the Great Hall.
"What story would you like to hear, my little fishes?"
Do you believe in the wonders of dreaming, the possibility of sharing a dream with another person, the capability of designing your dream right down to the last tiny detail? The Writer and Director of Inception Christopher Nolan does.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as the main protagonist Dom Cobb, a thief who specializes in stealing ideas straight from your very head by invading your dreams. The art is called extraction, and the mechanics behind this are somewhat of a science fiction element to the film, though I can already see conspiracy theorists concluding that this is no make-believe concept. Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), is Cobb's right hand man, the guy who is an expert in controlling said mechanics in the art of extraction.
He booked a one-way flight to the Neon City. He told his old lady he might not be back. There were no guarantees, he said. He had a reservation at the Gold Bullion hotel, and it was as plush as they came, downtown. After he checked in, he found the craps pit, and got over on a $5 pass line bet. Twice more he laid odds with the shooter, and twice more the shooter made point. It’d been fifteen minutes since he walked through the double doors, and he was already ahead. He thought about calling her; he looked at his cell phone, only one bar, so he collapsed it, and shoved it back into his pocket.
He spied a girl at the bar, and she warmed his mug with a smile. He was dressed to kill, and so it figured. He made his way to the bar, and struck up a conversation. She was in room 328, and asked him if he’d join her for a drink at ten.
The trick was to keep the truth hidden, twelve year old Abby Jenkins thought, as she sat listening to the psychologist. All the counseling in the world couldn't change the truth. Abby had killed her father. Finally free of him, she didn't want to incriminate herself. Her teachers said she was smart. She would choose her words carefully, react in the appropriate manner and keep her secret safe.
On the day of the murder, the Coast Guard and local police questioned her. She gave them the facts, but didn't mention how she had planned the murder and had worked to set the events in motion. At the crime scene, the beach, her bucket and shovel lay on the sand. Without the hidden third weapon, her brain, the other two were just toys to them. They never detected the setup, for which she was thankful, especially since she had help from Mother Nature. They never questioned her innocence. The authorities wrote off the murder as an accident.
New York, a city known for its many eccentrics and strange occurrences, is no stranger to musicians with eclectic tastes who favor unusual combinations of instruments, styles and genres. This is what makes the rich cultural texture of the city so memorable, and cellist/songwriter Leah Coloff ensures that her music, a complex web of punk rock, soul, classical and folk music and songs, is unforgettable.
“Eyes, black eyes that carve hollow secrets into your skull, empty experiences that grey not only your hair but fill in the wrinkles of your skin. You are a white wash canvas lost inside a storage basements cranny,” thought Yoma.
Yoma had travelled nowhere exotic. He had spent the majority of his 65 years exploring nothing but the inner workings of his own banal life. “I will see the world,” he whispered. This hushed prayer had been heard by friends, lovers, children, grandchildren and strangers for as long as Yoma could remember, he whispered “I am a million pieces of rock spread across every pixel of blue sky.” Yoma often spoke in this manner. Weaving Kerouac phrases that could leave a person frustrated with wonder. As a young boy a brick wall could suddenly become the peak of Everest, his mutt of a dog a faithful donkey and the air that floated amidst his left ear his knowledable Sherpa. As a man, the brick wall melted from Everest to a steel prison where he wrote lascivious theatrical pieces along side the Marquis De Sade and other men of great evil abilities. But as time went on, the brick wall froze into, well, a brick wall. The day Yoma stopped seeing flowers in the stars is the day Yoma meant it when he said, “I will see the world.”
Their running made a breeze out of the standstill air. One by one, they would give chase. The others fled in whatever direction they could, attempting to escape in a torrent of running feet, exhausted breath and scared laughter. Eventually one would become two, two became three and so on until the one had become the many. Those who knew them may have said days like these were a glimpse at what they would become. But to the boys in the grey-striped shirts, it was just a game. Always just a game.
The area in which they played seemed almost tailor made for them: a bright blue sky hanging over a small expanse of green grass; an old wooden shed with a flower garden off to the side. Sometimes they would wonder about that old wooden shed that no one ever seemed to use, that clipped green grass they’d never seen anybody cut. But thoughts like those always got pushed to the back of their mind. This place was theirs, an escape from their nightly incarcerations. This place was perfect…save for the dark wood.
Look at him. He is so buff. When he wears his black Storm Trooper suit it drives me crazy. I would bite his butt right here if I could. But it always pisses him off whenever I get affectionate around the troops. And he can be such a bitch when he gets angry. He says he has an image to uphold. He needs to demand respect. God, please! What did he think he demanded last night? Respect! He demanded total respect from me, but I sure as hell got no respect from him. He was such an animal. And it wasn’t just physical; he uses The Force during our little trysts, and let me tell you, that’s something else altogether. I’m still sore as hell and not at all sure I can sit on this damn scooter all day after what he did to me last night. At least he was home early. I guess I should be thankful he was not running around with one of his little numbers.
