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alternate history
Sometimes, I imagine that we would have been friends earlier. I imagine that my parents would have figured out a way for us to stay in California, and we would never have moved to Canada. We would have remained in the Bay Area, and I'd still spend the occasional afternoon at Malibu Fun & Games, playing in the arcade. It would have been in the ( Read more... ) -
an evening without interruptions
The brief pitch for the evening was ( Read more... ) -
to be present at the beginning
When friends share stories, I am usually happy to listen and enjoy the tale, to see how the experience is reflected in the storyteller and to be entertained by the way they've described it. I am happy that we share the moment and sometimes let it be something that we have in common, that binds us closer. When older friends of mine tell me stories ( Read more... ) -
a stick of clove, a shot of jager and a hug
In my mind, he has always been there, dancing in that corner where I first saw him, the long red hair, the cigarette in hand, the smile that he would crack to himself like he just thought of a joke that amused him and he hadn't made up his mind to share it with you quite yet. He has always been in that corner of the Middle East, flirting and ( Read more... ) -
emotions in the extreme
This was in the secondary screening room for the San Francisco International Film Festival, at the Q&A session that occurred after the end of the Shorts 2 program with the director of Shanghai Strangers, a film about a Chinese woman who has a chance encounter with a visiting Englishman and confesses a secret to him ( Read more... ) -
joined by coffee, bonded by words
Summer of 1995, I had been exchanging email with this person that I met on alt.gothic, who turned out to attend university only a couple of towns away in Worcester. We arranged to meet at a cafe and one of her first questions to me was, "so, your handle: c'ris ... is that handle a Dragonriders of Pern reference ( Read more... ) -
wherever I go, I shall have rice, garlic and a knife
Decades on from now, back when we first met, when we were young, unburdened, and looking for the lives that we wanted to live, arcanus and I would host these sprawling, crowded house parties. Back then, the booze would empty before the laughter stopped, and when we realized that we had run out of things to serve people but didn't want them to go home ( Read more... ) -
your turn will come
What do you get when you fill a bar with a bunch of champion storytellers? Loud conversation is what. The after party for the Massmouth StorySlam championship, the Big Mouth Off, was filled with voices of "That reminds me when ..." and "Did I ever tell you about ..." and "This one time at ..." They were big, confident voices used to projecting ( Read more... ) -
sky chasing
I saw the news over a Saturday morning breakfast. Massive coronal mass ejection two days ago. Solar wind to reach us tonight. mashuta posted a map of projected appearances of the aurora borealis with Massachusetts shaded in as "FAIR" because of cloud cover and her caption was "Fair? I'll take that!" I have not yet seen the aurora borealis, but I hope ( Read more... )
