Sunday, July 10, 2011

My Life in Mad Libs

sometimes I imagine that we all live our lives in the context of a mad lib story... where your preset mad lib is a result of a roulette, and after the ball lands - no matter what choices you make in the allotted noun, verb, adjective, or expletive space - the ending is the same for you and every other person who also happened to get the same mad lib... the only thing making your life different from theirs being that you've chosen a different set of words to complete your story. and the specific people you meet you do because at certain somewhat similar or convergent points in their mad lib, they just so happened to choose the same word as you. yet through it all, we derive amusement from the uncanny (and often absurd) choices we ourselves and others make, all for the simple pleasure of - at the end of the day - sharing our mad libs with each other.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Unexpected Moment Mid-Air

just witnessed the most magnificent sunset by plane this evening...

a striated, volcanic horizon and fields of cream-puffed peaks and valleys - perfectly punctuated with a gleaming sliver of moon overhead. the leisurely descent through sinewy cotton blankets is an experience quite unlike any other - until the sky has faded to opaque sapphire and the dreamlike backdrop has been discreetly replaced by a robotic grid of familiarity

an unexpected, welcome respite from the everyday - one of those moments uncapturable by any photo save the thousand mental panoramas frozen in memory

sometimes, the most marvelous part of traveling (whether for work or pleasure) is simply looking out the window and taking note of what's changed. the best part is - it's absolutely free.