May 2010
5 posts
contact high-five
n. an innocuous touch by someone just doing their job—a barber, yoga instructor or friendly waitress—that you enjoy more than you’d like to admit, a feeling of connection so stupefyingly simple that it cheapens the power of the written word, so that by the year 2025, aspiring novelists would be better off just giving people a hug.
selectric
adj. in the mood to get struck by lightning, to stand in an open field and be singled out and drafted by the universe because of your innate potential to resolve a battle between faceless titans roaring in the sky, a task which doesn’t require you to write a cover letter.
the McFly effect
n. the phenomenon of observing your parents interact with people they grew up with, which reboots their personalities into youth mode, reverting to a time before the last save point, when they were still dreamers and rascals cooling their heels in the wilderness, waiting terrified and eager to meet you for the first time.
shorpy
adj. yearning to move into a photo from a hundred years ago, to wade into the blurred-edge sepia haze that hangs in the air between people in hats and petticoats who walk the bare earth, who leer stoically into this dusty and dangerous future, whose battered shoes are anchors locked fast in the fantasy that none of it risks turning out any other way but the way it happened, which is just as well...
scabulous
adj. proud of a scar on your body, an autograph signed to you by a world grateful for your continued willingness to play with her, even when you don’t feel like it.