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Text of the page (random words):
walls with several gallons of acrylic based mother s milk when the painters finished the woman sighed and told them not to bother moving the furniture back against the walls she could already see the color creeping back through it seemed her walls didn t want to be white exhausted the woman finally did what she should have done months ago she called her mother i hope you realize that every time you paint those walls you re making your apartment a few gallons smaller her mother said and besides why do you want a white apartment my wedding dress was white and so was your grandmother s and it was a lie both times her sister was equally as helpful is it so horrible if the walls don t perfectly match your over coordinated life you might be looking for something fresh and new but that apartment s not fresh and new it s been lived in just like you have don t you think it s a little arrogant to walk into that old place and expect it to start over and her best boy friend can you blame them after all blank pages aren t terribly interesting until you write on them i d be pissed too if somebody came along and tried to erase all my interesting the woman hung up the phone she walked through her red kitchen and sat in her blue den she looked at the green across from her and wondered were the walls being stubborn or were they right before she moved into the apartment and filled it with her furniture books and baggage its walls had already hosted dozens of birthday parties book clubs and movie nights they had seen the arguments and orgasms of every family that had lived there who was she to erase the history that seasoned these walls the stories that would seep through even if she tried her hardest to cover them and so instead of asking the apartment to loose itself under her relentless paintbrush the woman let herself be its next tenant she threw away several unopened gallons of cresting cloud and bought a new bedspread that looked great in her bedroom she also found four striped pillows for her couch and decided that it was fine for her curtains to clash with the kitchen s red a little conflict made dinner more interesting the woman grew to love her colorful and complicated apartment she even told a few of her friends that she couldn t imagine why she ever wanted it to be white white walls are about as interesting as sleeping babies she said one night at the bar sure they re new and beautiful but they don t have any good stories not long after the woman came home from work and found that her spare bedroom where she did most of her reading writing and singing too loudly with the radio had become the same pale yellow as her favorite spring sweater and it always would be and that made her very very happy posted by sometimes roads diverge at monday december 16 2013 no comments labels fictions saturday july 27 2013 stay away it s not uncommon to see people men and women rehearsing on the subway young white women hold scripts in their laps whispering lines as the train rocks them toward an audition young black men stand in front of subway doors looking at their reflection in the glass watching themselves rap imagining that the voice in their headphones is actually their own the woman got on the q train at canal st shuffled into a seat and sat with her knees pressed tightly together around her tourists crowded together in clumps hot with vacation sweat and proud of themselves for buying big counterfeit purses in chinatown those who noticed the woman might have wondered what it was like to be her an asian woman in the almost foreign country of new york city s lower east side most of the tourists however either didn t notice the woman or pressed her so tightly behind several hundred other vacation memories that they never thought of her again in her lap the woman held a small spiral bound notebook it was the kind of notebook little girls fill with stickers and the meaningless scribbles they pretend are words in the pages of the notebook the woman copied and recopied the strange new english letters training her hand to remember the way they felt on its pages she carefully drew the vowels and consonants stitching them together into something like language over it she whispered the clumsy new words that felt big and sticky in her mouth the notebbook was her private rehearsal space where she practiced the sounds she couldn t yet say and studied the words she didn t yet understand the man looked down and saw the woman s opened notebook he wasn t spying he was just noticing when it s been a hard day and the commute is long and your arm is tired from holding the chrome bar above your head it s natural to let both your chin and gaze drop on days like that it s easy to let yourself look down and scan someone else s magazine someone else s crossword puzzle someone else s cleavage on those days it s easy to notice the notebook in the small asian woman s lap there on the blue lined page printed in too neat letters he couldn t help but notice that the woman had written i won t let you control me anymore you ve made my life a misery do not telephone me stay away the woman s lips moved slowly as she studied the words like a child trying to read the sunday times to her father she furrowed her brow in concentration won t let you control me life a misery stay away obviously these weren t sentences the woman learned in a language guide they weren t the rote practical english for non native speakers phrases that are recited in dingy community center classrooms no the man thought someone helped her form these thoughts someone helped her craft this syntax this story as he scanned the lines on her page the man felt what for her sadness regret pity after all these were phrases a person shouldn t have to rehearse in another person s language these were phrases that should slip easily off the tongue like fire hot and rampant unchecked yet here the woman sat silently mouthing the words studying control misery stay away but the man understood or he thought he did like most people he was familiar with the ache of not just speaking words like these but planning to speak them rehearsing them anticipating them he knew what it was like to sit in stammering frustration as the right words lodge stubbornly in your chest do not telephone me he guessed that in a week or a month or maybe more the woman would finally feel confident enough to step off the train and say those lines to someone but to who who was the person she had apparently lived with in love and then frustration for so long that she could no longer bear being not understood who was this man she couldn t talk to this person she had been intimate with without being intimate and how long could she ride the train with that notebook in her lap waiting to tell him stay away the man turned his head and pretended not to see at 8th st the train slowed to a stop as it always did the bell sounded the conductor s voice announced the station and reminded passengers where they would stop next people pushed and shoved as tourists tried to enter the train before commuters had a chance to leave the woman looked up from her notebook and saw her friend board the train the friend stood in the doorway for a moment scanning the car apparently looking for the woman when she saw the woman the friend tilted her head sympathetically the woman s eyes filled with tears and closed pressing heavy drops down her cheeks when she opened them the friend was standing in front of her looking down with both concern and an anger that s the truest sign of loyalty 甜美的花 我不明白 那个混蛋对你说了什么 she asked sweet flower i don t understand what did that jerk say to you 我不知道 i m not sure the woman replied and handed her friend the notebook posted by sometimes roads diverge at saturday july 27 2013 no comments labels fictions tuesday july 20 2010 the man with no number yesterday i was summonsed for jury duty i ve been waiting for this day for 17 years call me crazy but i don t understand why people try so hard to get out of jury duty yesterday when the clerk asked for anyone who thought they should be excused to form an orderly line 50 people stood and queued to the left of the bench none of them were dressed as if they would rush back to the office as soon as they were dismissed and put the final touches on their groundbreaking cure for cancer finish drafting a pre approved mid east peace treaty or tighten the last bolts on one of those anti gravity hover cars i ve been expecting since i was 7 years old on the contrary if they were excused each of these men and women were planning to go home turn off their cell phones and waste the afternoon by watching television like me they ve all spent a significant portion of their lives sitting on a couch in front of the square headed time eater and what have they been watching 2000 s american idol a show where we watch young singers perform so we can responsibly cast our vote as to whether they ve presented a strong enough case to stay and compete on the next week s show paula simon and randy are the judges america is the jury 1990 s law order a show where the legal process in action from arrest to prosecution holds the attention of millions of people for 60 minutes or up to 5 hours if you get drawn into a vortex of re runs on tnt every week or if you get caught in the previously mentioned syndication vortex every day 1980 s the people s court one of the earliest examples of reality tv the people s court gave daytime television watchers a voyeur s seat at the legal system s bedroom window while we folded laundry and waited for al gore to develop the internet didn t we all try to guess how judge wapner would settle the case of the overdone underthings honestly who hasn t succumbed to the guilty pleasure of divorce court who wouldn t recognize judge judy if they passed her on the street what child of the 80 s can claim that he she didn t ask to stay up after the cosby show and cheers to watch as judge harry t stone presided over his zany night court what baby boomer doesn t know how perry mason ended every week i m sure oliver north bill clinton monica lewinsky and oj simpson each wish america wasn t addicted to the drama of our legal system at work i m also sure john grisham is thankful we are his book to movie fortune has been funded by courtroom junkies who love reading watching stories with titles like the firm the client and runaway jury and yet when given the opportunity to watch legal drama in real life 50 people lined up yesterday in a brooklyn courthouse to say no thank you i d rather not see the live show i ll wait for it to come out on dvd or maybe buy the paperback fortunately as these men and women gave their carefully rehearsed excuses to the court clerk i was sitting close enough to the bench to overhear many of their reasons for why i can t help protect the innocent or punish the guilty depending on whether your glass is more full or more empty today my favorite excuse a middle aged man handed his summons to the court clerk and asked in a heavy brooklyn accent to be dismissed the clerk confirming that the man wasn t an immigrant despite his brooklyn forever accent politely asked sir where were you born i m from brooklyn the man said barely hiding his pride that he s never been above 23rd street then why didn t you fill in your social security number i was born here in brooklyn the man confirmed but they never gave me one of those social security numbers they must a forgot can i go bank accounts insurance forms tax returns w4 s 1099 s credit card applications marriage licenses certificates of divorce all of these documents require a social security number is it possible for a 40 year old man to live in brooklyn usa his whole life without having a social did the man really expect the court to believe that the us government who uses this number to make sure every citizen pays every penny of tax they owe simply forgot to issue him one it would have made more sense for the man to tell the clerk he was waiting for uncle sam to issue him a new social security number cause his old one was broken the clerk rolled his eyes and told citizen x to sit down and finish his paperwork i laughed aloud wondering again why people gripe and groan when given free tickets to this marvelous show tomorrow the man with no number will sit on a jury together with 11 other fair and impartial strangers he will be forced to do in public what many of us voluntarily do in private pass judgment i hope he s more fair than he is clever posted by sometimes roads diverge at tuesday july 20 2010 2 comments labels non fictions thursday july 15 2010 there should always be dancing a man danced during an earthquake and believed his steps shook the world when his dancing stopped the man saw what he assumed his joy had done and swore to never dance again foolish man there should always be dancing posted by sometimes roads diverge at thursday july 15 2010 no comments labels poems thursday july 1 2010 what i did during my summer vacation protected by the long shadows of tall buildings my virgin city skin hadn t seen the sun in many months imagine its surprise when i arrived in florida stripped my shirt and asked it to gradually toast from flour white to a light golden brown i know i should have given it more warning if i had maybe it wouldn t have skipped brown paused only briefly at pink and committed itself to a stunning shade of red in less than two hours at the time exposing my skin to the roasting sun didn t seem like an unreasonable thing to do after all even at its hottest a summer day in florida is seldom hotter than 100 although 100 is undeniably hot it s not technically scorching hot an average oven in an average kitchen doesn t even offer 100 as an option the dials on most ovens start at a warm and basically useless 250 chocolate chip cookies refuse to bake if offered anything less than 350 the bread in your toaster expects at least 400 before it will properly toast why then was a relatively cool 95 day able to thoroughly burn my skin in less than two hours the answer of course is concealed by my clever cooking metaphor everyone knows that playing in the florida sun has become less like playing in a conventional oven and more like playing in a microwave oven thanks to teenagers spraying aqua net in the 1980 s soccer moms driving suvs in the 1990 s and armies burning oil wells in the 2000 s florida s summer sun can now scorch your skin quicker than ever before you may ask why did you let yourself get burned bryan haven t you been listening to al gore haven t you been paying attention to global warming the greenhouse effect the hole in the ozone layer and the dangers of uv radiation don t you know that an afternoon at the beach is practically as dangerous as smoking a cigarette or eating out of old tupperware why didn t you wear sun screen well i did before my first day on the beach i carefully applied suntan lotion to every inch of my exposed s...