Last Little Fascination

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Hot sun and oh, a band of round rubber! There on the ground, stretching I, down and I can reach it. Another rubber band for me. This hot day would’ve broken it. The edges, on days like this, get cracks if they’ve ever been rained on. And then it will stop being elastic. When I stretch it, it won’t snap back to its oval—it will stay and then break apart. I won’t stretch this one. It’s ... Continue Reading

The Dealer’s New Life

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The young dealer looked at his bread, lunch crumbling under the weight of haikus, and realized he’d have a better life in another city. He charmed a burning home out of the rain and glowed in her gaze. With the sparkle of a new suitcase, they left for the seaside where life would continue happily ever after. ... Continue Reading

Montgolfières

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Peek of Exchange While trees cite sky and sky golds, surrender, solar abandon, to beatitude! Behold below, the escaped blue arboretum! Departing Dimensions Toward vertex, a vapour marble rides its chimera of fibrous wind and heroic solitude. Clearing of the Lucid Balloon Whether nighttime rises or falls, between its borders echo a flotilla of twilight. ... Continue Reading

An Impromptu Circus

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A triangle of trees were lassoed with tough ropes. Each trunk, encircled with a padded harness, held itself stoically to the ground. Two men bounced, wobbled, and periodically traversed the rope between trees with grace. One floppy, determined child tried. Outside the triangle of tightropes, a woman practiced spinning a large hoop in a series of tricks. Sometimes she jumped through it, which caused her to drop it. ... Continue Reading

Tip of My Fingers

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Last night I discovered I can taste through my fingers. I brewed some tea from boldo leaves, green tea, and kombucha. While waiting for it to cool to a drinkable temperature, I passed my left hand through the steam. I like the downy accumulation of dampness, the almost-burn of heat. I relaxed my eyes, letting the focus blur with the steam passing around my fingers. My finger tips didn’t just feel warm though, ... Continue Reading

Direction Giver

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I jaywalked diagonally from one sidewalk to the other. At 7:30 in the morning traffic is light. But I hadn’t noticed others on the sidewalk. Except for a well-bundled family, which walked up the hill I was going down. A tall husband, wife, and their two children. The man made eye contact with me and said “Monsieur, monsieur.” I stopped and looked at him, realizing he’d ask me for directions. ... Continue Reading

Aesthetic Transformation

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“Ugly! Eyesore! How could people think it was a good idea?” A giant slab of concrete in the middle of the outer edge of the park. For shame, city! This was no sculpture, I thought. Monument between Parc La Fontaine and Sherbrooke Why preserve and move the edge of a utilitarian-designed building to the park? If the rest of the building had been demolished, why save this? What a hoax this artist made. Eve ... Continue Reading

Politician’s Lament

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I got something the other day. After a glass of x knows what and four men had to haul the logs out of the corner, we all might say we got something— But really, it was I, I got it. It started when the king fell over. "No way to play chess" I said, referring mostly to myself. But I hadn't pushed him and indeed not a single other game had finished, so they said. I saw a few pretty close to tha ... Continue Reading

What is a Thinking Organism?

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Thinking organisms are, as the name implies, organisms that one creates purely as thinking. The term does not refer to organisms that think, rather “thinking” is used as a gerund. Thinking organisms remain “within” one’s mind where they grow and evolve as an organism might, were it physical. I came up with the notion for these in 1995, writing my first (perhaps naïve) experiment in th ... Continue Reading