My Cardboard Balcony

This week certainly started with a bang and ended with a whimper. Right now, there are fewer than twenty days left in the elementary school year. My students are totally checked out. I'm almost checking out. I'm becoming more and more stressed in my work and find myself becoming sloppier. This first part of the week was no exception to the culmination of mental anxiety and exhaustion that took hold of me. Ultimately, mental compromise lends itself to physical problems. In short, I got very, very tired. So I took a day and a half off of work. And honestly, I wish there was more I can say. I thought about reviewing The Great Gatsby since I just saw it in theaters with a friend (she just turned twenty-four, so I gave her candy. Yay), but no energy. I've been able to work on my miniseries project pretty aptly and would like to go into detail on it, but no energy. I even have a lot to look forward to next week, when I get to celebrate my two-year anniversary with my girlfr...

Night at Pearl's by Belinda Roddie I’ll meet her in a jazz club in San Francisco, the tug-of-war traffic dying down with the sizzle of the setting sun.   Guided by the husky microphone feedback, the smooth artillery of a snare with the warm tremolo of a wet reed in an embouchure’s kiss.   Spittle glowing passion silver in the light.   Charming. But it’ll be the pianist I’m listening to.   Fingers bristling with yellow calluses against the white and black bones, rising and falling like multi-syllabic inhalations.   Music can start a conversation without the restraints of human language, and we all know that what we recite says very little compared to what we perform. The lounge setting will be palpable:   Red-hot lamps, casting a haze over half-empty glasses.   The couches lined with comatose critics.   The smell of juniper and vermouth on everyone’s breath.   I’ll be standing in the corner like the stereotypical loner and all I’ll be...

If Claude followed the airstream all the way down the stairs, he would find the cellar where all of his uncle's wines were stored. But the bottles, when opened, would emit a foul-smelling, blatantly scarlet plume of gas, and the beverages would be effervescent, frothing, unwilling to be drunk without a scowl or wrinkled nose. So Claude never followed the airstream; he was too cautious of the odor.