In case of blackout, proceed as follows:

The store will fall inky dark. Streetlights will reflect off of the glossy mylar covers. Customers will mill about quietly, and some customers won't even think of leaving. This is where you come in. Make a sign for the front door: "power outage: temporarily closed". Locate a flashlight. There's one by the ( Read more... )

Time and date and space are all doing their numbers on me again, of course. And winter and cold and gray and then that thickness, the rush of people, the throngs, the way they push and course around shelves and other people, the way they press against each other and the way they press their phones to their heads and talk to them so hard, like there ( Read more... )

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1   But December is by far the most terrific month; summer and all its warm luxuries could almost go rot for all the love I am dishing out to December this year around.

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You know, what is so wrong about all of that? All I want to do, really, is to listen to maybe Dylan's Greatest Hits Side One and possibly Side Two on a record player, in my bedroom. And so I sat and looked very firmly at the record player I bought three years ago, the one the old man at the estate sale assured me would work, and I plug it in and I ( Read more... )

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   Oh, but October is winter. Maybe we thought it wouldn't be. Maybe we were counting on the sun to stick around. Maybe we even lost our jackets, in the meantime. I know my black hoodie's gone missing, which, even as I'm cleaning out my closet and wading through polyesters, twinges at me. It's one of those items I accumulated, back when I was at ( Read more... )

I found the only large patch of ice in Portland the other morning. So I stepped on it. And promptly and without grace fell ( Read more... )