centre of the universe

Tag: smart folks

  • So much left unsaid

    “We each of us mourn and grieve the holes our loved ones leave in our lives when they go,” I wrote to my friend yesterday. “When someone dies unexpectedly, that hole doesn’t have soft edges and neatly hemmed openings. It’s a vicious, torn-open wound. The bigger the personality, the bigger the void. Particularly for someone…

  • New Math

    “Takoda and Wesley are collecting shells on the beach in identical pails. Takoda estimates she has filled 7/12 of her pail. Wesley estimates he has filled 4/10 of his pail. Suppose the children combine their shells. Will one pail be full? Explain.” — from Math Makes Sense 7 published by Pearson Education. Before we tackle this…

  • Taking an Aeroplane Across the World

    I have been peeling glue from my fingers for a week. This, too, is strangely cathartic. Insert long-winded, slightly purple prose about shedding the old skin and leaving troubles behind, blah-blah-blah. In reality, there are little fingerprint flakes all over my favourite spot on the chesterfield. Don’t tell His Nibs. The Captain and I cut…

  • I don’t need no arms around me

    It occurred to me that in putting together this aeroplane methodically, piece by piece, painstakingly gluing one tiny piece of balsa wood to the next, that this has become my therapy. It wasn’t a huge revelation. I didn’t fly through the streets of the greater metropolitan valley centre area shouting that I’d discovered the next…

  • Beware the Bandersnatch, my boy

    I would make a shitty spy. Seriously. Espionage would totally not be my strong suit. I’d wriggle my way to someone’s baccarat table, receive a SECRET MESSAGE jotted on a tiny piece of paper inside a $50,000 chip, swallow the paper, and then forget the message. My contacts would be all, “so. Agent c3. What…

  • Full Frontal Disclosure

    It is our duty to one another to be better. Not to be the best. To be better.