169 tagged with #daily

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Spinning


This bicycle is not about how fast I am capable of going, but more about how fast I am willing to go, while keeping all of my weaknesses as a fleshy, breakable body in the back of my head.

I have a VIN in hand for a motorcycle promised to me when I get back into the states next month, and people call that my newest death machine.

I still don't have a graceful way to descend stairs on roller blades, but cannot resist the appeal of a smooth, silent glide powered by the subtle turns of the ankles.

When my neighbors' air conditioning units turn on, the alleyway rumbles with ancient oscillating fans, and I know that all they're doing is making the world beyond their rooms a sliver hotter. That's why the petty part of me smiles whenever I see their dog lifting a leg over the rusty old machines.

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14 May 2014 23:56


Progress


Seven ants attempted to cross the tape barrier and failed. The scouts trapped inside circled the barrier and felt along their crumb trails, but have not found their escape route. As much as I avoid wishing ill of living creatures, I wish they never will.

It's hard to think of ants as individual living creatures anyway. They are units of a whole, and to kill off a collection of scouts is like snipping the fingernail of a roving touch.

No new ants have come inside, that we know of.

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13 May 2014 16:34


Summer


This is the summmer I wished for when I was 15. Silly foodservice jobs, spending all my savings on irresponsible toys, planning long trips that might never happen.

15 year old me would be proud.

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12 May 2014 22:30


Omens


I round the corner before my office to a fluttering of black wings, and a sparrow flies towards me. I freeze, bike in hand, and the sparrow wheels past and lands on the handle of my office door again. When I approach, slowly, it takes off, rushing for the stairwell at the end of the hallway. It hesitates before flying through the door, deciding instead fo come back towards me.

By this time, I'm ready, and lean my bike against the wall while pulling off my shirt. It aims to cross over my head, and I net it gently. It struggles in my hands for only a moment before falling still, and I carry the parcel to the back door.

It doesn't move when I spread my shirt on the grass, and I worry that I killed it in the process of trying to catch it, but I can see its eyes darting and its chest heaving. It only takes a few gentle nudges on its wing and tailfeathers before it takes off into the sky.

---

I called my mother to wish her a happy mother's day, and she answered the phone in her sleep. I said she could call me back later, but instead, she mumbled packing instructions for our trip next week until I convinced her to hangup.

She called me back later anyway, and informed me of a list of personal items she would pack for me because she didn't trust that I would pack them for myself.

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11 May 2014 16:17


Ant Torture Device


When I removed the plastic window seals from my room with the coming of warm weather, I left a residue of sticky tape that I never bothered to clean off. Ant war season started up again, and there's a yearly battle fought on my windowsill. The winners do such a thorough job of clearing away the dead that it rarely bothers me when thousands of insects are swarming for a few square inches of space in my vicinity.

The only place where I cannot tolerate ants is the kitchen, and regardless of how obsessively fastidious we are with making any scrap of food inaccessible, there are always little drops of grease of flecks of crumbs hidden somewhere. The scouts lay down a scent trail that calls other scouts.

The tape residue around my window effectively seals my room from ant invasion; there's a pile of stuck ants wiggling helplessly in one corner, and their comrades sadly march away and deem this area inaccessible. This is a lesson I can learn; I've sealed up the kitchen window gaps with double-sticky tape, and watched as the scouts went into immediate panic at their path being interrupted by a thin, uncrossable barrier.

They're pressing in from either side, and I feel sorry for them, but they are still banned from my kitchen.

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09 May 2014 22:47


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