Alliterated

At attention

in amazement

after the attack

is alleviated

all is above, not around

the aforementioned antics.

Blonde buds

bloom barely

bit by bit

before brandishing

the brightest

beautiful blossoms.

Can I catch

catastrophes,

curb chaos,

crunch consequences

of the cold

with only calm considerations?

Don't detract from

their doom,

don't distract

the demons of the day

with a dismal defense

don't delay

daunting darker desires.

Tugging the Line

Balloons are tough to avoid heartbreak with.

You hold a bright orb of color

lighter than the air,

bouncing along above you on the end of a ribbon.

And its company is wonderful,

but there's that constant

tug on the line.

It yearns to float up

beyond your reach.

And you want to let it go,

although you will miss it dearly,

for freedom is all it wants.

You hold that freedom

dangling in your hand.

You let the ribbon slide up

out of your clenched palm.

And the moment it drifts up,

just out of your reach,

regret hits you like

a big yellow cheese bus.

It grows smaller and smaller

you suddenly feel responsible

for all of the trees

it nearly misses

and the gradually thinning atmosphere

pulling its insides

slowly out.

Freedom becomes the impending

pop!

You wonder if you should have

just held on...

Snowglobing

I'm sitting on my windowsill overlooking Central Park, watching the snow just fall and fall and fall. From twelve stories up, if I tilt my head at a slight upward angle, the trees disappear from view and all that's left is a solid white sky with little peppered dots of snowflakes drifting through it. I woke up in a snow globe this morning.

There is no slanted roof or gutters here to catch these little flakes and clump them together into one white mass. Instead, they float right up to my window and dance around. The wind conducts their movement as they fall fast and then rise up again suddenly, slowly suspended in midair. I sit, front row in a one person audience to this wintry ballet.

And it's funny that I've despised the snow for so long, refusing to see it in this light because of its chilling, bitter season. But every flake is really just a lonely raindrop that shivered as it fell from the clouds, becoming frozen in its liquid motion as it drifted down. Like everything else, they are bound by the cold.

And I'm frozen too, sitting by the window watching the stiff beauty of a dead season. But now I see through it; the snow will melt into water again, the trees will bud and paint the world in green again, and I will get up again and look at other things and move to other places. But for now I will drift with the snowflakes until I slowly thaw and melt back into motion.

There Is A Spaniard In My Mother's Bathroom

There is a Spaniard in my mother's bathroom. His face regally gazes out at me from under a wide-brimmed hat in a lower corner of the wall by the door, where the tile has broken off and left the sea green plaster exposed underneath. His chiseled features are formed by marbled wisps of white; the remains of some adhesive that wasn't ready to let go.

His face has always been there, but no one has ever mentioned it. I don't know if anyone else has looked at that broken tile and seen anything more than just that. I will not speak of him. He is my personal portrait and as I sit on the toilet and stare at his face, I wonder; if I broke away all of the white and green tiles that line these walls, what magnificent portrait of some foreign, royal land would be uncovered.

60%

Let me tell you something about flat seltzer: It has more emotion than your normal water. The tap water, it’s got stuff in it, sure, and the bottled water, it’s pristine and all of that. But that flat seltzer is so much more. It’s naked and vulnerable. When all the bubbles are gone, no one wants it. It feels abandoned and useless, like a singer whose voice has been lost. It’s felt joy and it’s experienced loss. It’s brimming with insecurity as it sits in the fridge waiting for someone to unscrew its cap and hear that painful silence where a fizzing used to be.

Don’t pour it out! Devour its flatness, feast upon its shortcomings, absorb its essence! You see, everyone forgets that seltzer is still water underneath all the razzle dazzle.

My water needs character; it needs emotion! I’m 60% water— that’s more than half of me! How can you have 60% of you be soulless?

That’s just no way to live.

Rold Gold White Dipped Honey Braided Twists

I have decided to take a moment to make an important public service announcement.

For a while now, I have declared Rold Gold Honey Wheat Braided Twists to be my favorite pretzel of all time. I did not think that any pretzel could ever out-do my love for these delightfully salty twists with just a hint of sweetness, but Rold Gold, you've done it again!

I was browsing through the Hampstore (Hampshire College store) a couple days ago, when my eyes were drawn to a small tan bag. I stared at it for a minute, not quite believing what I had seen, but alas it was true!

It was a bag of Rold Gold White Dipped Honey Braided Twists. That's right, the most delectable pretzel has been dipped in white chocolate and my god, it is amazing.

I've just finished the bag and I will probably be back to buy another one later today because they really raise the bar for pretzels everywhere (Utz, get at me!).

So I just wanted to let the world know that a superior pretzel has been born. I'm not saying that you should go out and buy a bag right now, but basically that is exactly what I'm saying.

*I couldn't find a picture of the white dipped ones, so just imagine those dipped in white chocolate...

Italics

I haven't blogged in a while, and I can't think of anything that pressing to blog about, or anything that interesting to randomly blog about. But lately I have noticed that italics make anything look more important. This applies mainly to full sentences, not just particular words. To understand the full effect of the power of italics, I will provide a few examples:

Like this sentence.

Look at the difference between:

The iguana prefers a down jacket.

and

The iguana prefers a down jacket.