Samples, Sir?

She saw Alice running:

the long black hair, trimmed straight across the bottom, swished perfectly behind her quotidian white hairband. Alice didn’t see her—she was intent on getting across the street before the light changed. And even so, under the guise of a new haircut, the American teacher was just another foreigner on the streets of northwest Seoul—another cog in the machine of industrialism Bill had so aptly nicknamed, “The English Factory.” Alice had been one of hers and Bill’s favorites—Bill’s for her writing abilities and hers for Alice’s spunk and dry humor. As a fourth grader, she once wrote a novella complete with character development of a “nemesis,” and always played Devil’s Advocate during debate rounds. Yet I saw her vulnerable side, too. After yet another in a series of failed vocabulary “compulsory” exams, even steely-eyed Alice couldn’t hold back the tears on her walk home, and I’d hugged her and promised things would get better. With a brain like hers, used constructively, they only could. Alice was one you’d write stories about.

But I never did.



He cursed a little, not so much because he cared about the photographs as because he wanted to preserve his good spirits, his serotonin-rich mood, and to do this he needed a modicum of cooperation from the world of objects. ~Jonathan Franzen




Alternate names for the cigarette holder
Extensive asher
Asher extension
Filtre
Smoke compressor
Aperture flue
Smoking kazoo




4 little balls of sugar, orange. He likes to read the paper over orange juice. She picked it apart, over and over. The little green fuzz falls on the floor. Drinking in the morning is OK if you want to fall asleep while flying. She picked the blanket apart, even thought she knew it was bad for it. I didn’t teach the course, she said. It wasn’t me. Intellectual weight (Yeah, those tomes weight heavy on the brain). Sometimes she thinks better in the shower. The kid drew dinosaurs and danced.