Alive and stateside

The most unexpectedly poignant moment of the week:

"I just hope you find what you like to do. I don't think I ever did."

--My grandfather's parting words after our dinner at Claim Jumper, the Outback Steakhouse of the new millennium. (In case you were wondering, a claim jumper is someone who, during the California gold rush, beamed '49ers over the head with shovels and stole their pay dirt.)

And in the spirit of self-humiliation, here's a piece of circa tenth grade writing I found while unsuccessfully attempting to purge my room. It was for a fiction class, and I was supposed to write a character description/personification of an emotion. So...enjoy (or not). Ha!

Passion
She is running through the woods. Wild, unique, daring. Staring blood red sunsets in the eye. She laughs without warning and cries on your shoulder. “That is dangerous,” they say. “Impossible,” say others.
She hears their warnings but tries anyway.
Challenging, believing, living: She lies on her back at night underneath the starry sky, listening to the stories the universe has to tell. She makes it up herself as she goes along.
Two days are never the same. Yesterday she fell in love.
Today her heart was broken.
The thundering currents flow through her veins. Her picturesque love of life is contagious. Running with the wolves, sitting calmly beneath her favorite tree, watching the moon rise. She gambles with her feelings, and she usually catches herself when she falls.
Unless she doesn’t: She keeps falling…
falling…
falling…
The sky holds her up.


Coming up next, perhaps some of the sesquipedalian gems my ex-boss wrote and put in my mailbox?