Word Balloon

by Joanna Penn Cooper and Todd Colby

Some days you learn a lot about eye shadow or about how
the medication inherent in cosmetics makes the heart grow fonder,
or softer, or more medicated.  If you really believed this was your life
and not an ever-evolving state of emergency, you might blend into
the horizon like a warm knife into butter on a boat in the Indian
Ocean. But I digress. There are programs designed to help you lift
weights while buying fruit or to help you smooth out your fear of death
with a straightening iron.  In my own program, I loom for hours
over the advertisements in the back of The New Yorker, which
is sort of like stabbing myself in the face. Don't forget the world
is full of things like overly tall trees, impudent starlings, toxic puddles,
and, when you really get down to the brass tacks, some rather molten
leftovers from the time of the burnt wafer. I mean I'm all over
the enlightenment tip, pausing in doorways to die and be reborn
108 times a day. It's only fair to tell you how far I've come to tell you
of the odd course at our flanks, jumping from year to year.  In fact,
I've come from the the past to tell you. You are hearing the voice
of someone who no longer exists or never really did. You are filling
your shoes with sand in an attempt to appear more carefree and
useless. My advice: Take off your angst like taking off a coat made
of angst. I'll meet you there or anywhere they still let me in.