Believe it or not, the ivory has mostly yellowed and I am considering turning it in for something more disposable. A piano, perhaps, or a bag of napkins. My sense of value is all distorted, you'd say, but you'd be forgetting the most valuable thing in the world: the thing you you need right now. Now. It's a magical time, a magical place. It is the blade that was too dull to split infinity in two; it is the tip of a rubbing pencil, summoning the pre-existing into perception. Of course,...

It's night time, and the street lamps have just lit the main streets with an orange glow that I have come to associate with the emptiness of a city at night. A car whizzes past, tiny sparks flying up from a cigarette cast carelessly out the window. The palm trees stir in the wind like restless soldiers; perhaps they are impatient with their charges. Or perhaps they, like me, are tired of hearing the same old lies. "The sun will come out tomorrow." Much good that does if all our blinds ar...

I knew the world would never be the same when I saw the adjectives drop to the ground like insects and the adverbs go up in flames like moths in a bonfire. Suddenly I was a tiny piece of my own world view and my notions of reality expanded as if I had been peering at a globe and had suddenly backed up. Vocabulary seemed an exercise in a futility, and I felt my whole being fill with the generic and supposedly empty word I've known since I could speak: "big." As a human, what do I know of ...

She is, first and foremost, beautiful. Beautiful in that sense that can only be a composite of physical and mental and spiritual and emotional beauty. She is talented and stimulating and comforting and challenging and accepting and inspiring and has contributed to my life to the point where I felt I had no human need that could not be met by her. We've been best friends since High School, though at times we have flirted with the possibility of becoming more. Last fall, we started dating...

Among all the metaphors that Christian's use to describe God, "Father" is probably the most ubiquitous. "Shepherd" may be right up there, though. Because it's so common, churches spend a lot of time explaining that metaphor, and what it means to be a father. It's no wonder, then, that almost every sermon on the topic includes a clause that sounds something like this: "Now, you may not have had the best father in the world. Maybe yours was physically or verbally abusive; maybe he was just ...

Today -- is all gray --and though I fling paint up at the sky, it falls pitifully back down, and somehow the scarlet that seems so cheerful in the sky is not so cheerful in the face. Today I sang amazing grace (the sound was sickly sweet); the irony so thick I gagged, I watched your love retreat. But it's no use watching, and so, eyes glued heavenward, the paint keeps flying. Could any day be more brilliant?

It’s silly to get all excited about the New Year. After all, isn’t a year just a cultural assignment of meaning to an otherwise meaningless point in time? And what is the New Year but a serial ascension that mirrors precisely the banal progression of one moment to the next. It was 2006 before, and now it’s 2007. Big deal. New Years resolutions? Ridiculous. Breaking them is as much a cliché as making them; it is simply one more time of the year dedicated to people making promises—and ...

I hadn’t eaten in forty-eight hours. Weak with hunger, I hobbled to the kitchen, clutching a can of tomato soup in a death-grip. My vision warped the house into a nightmarish twilight zone of twisted architecture and impossible angles, but I ignored it all in the bee-line for the microwave. The can had a pull-top lid, but I didn’t have the energy to be grateful. I wrenched it off with all the precision my apathetic muscles could provide and poured it into a bowl. A bowl. Where did the bowl...

There you are, talking to your ex. Just talking. You're keeping a comfortable physical distance and mentioning your girlfriend's name every few minutes. The reminiscence begins (more or less) innocently. Just an accidental used of the code word you once used to talk about sex when your friends were around. “Let’s go play pool,” you say. She winks at you and both of you laugh for almost a full minute. Then, suddenly, you’re reliving the good old days. Remember that time she showed up at ...

As a child of Hollywood, I know the signs of a life-changing experience. The camera angle shifts to capture the emotional struggle of the protagonist; the ambient noise drops to a non-intrusive murmur; key phrases are delivered sequentially and without overlap. Eyes sparkle with suppressed tears, and music gently beckons toward the appropriate response. Such expectations are probably the reason that my own life-changing experience caught me off guard. One moment, I was conversing with ...

Fellow gossipers: My name is Dan.. I've been around for about half a year. According to popular belief, I'm going to marry Trin (New-age nomad). I'm 17 and have a relatively successful blog ("A Plethora of Thought") that I update regularly. That's probably enough of an intro. ~Dan