The Brooklyn Bridge

"If you can explain it, it's something other than love." "That will be the time I will mentally give birth to 55 puppies." "Is it a bribe or a gift?" "Ah, such a splendid little war." "No. White chocolate doesn't exist." "Brooklyn, people like you laugh at a joke three times. Once when I tell it, again when everybody else gets it, and once more when you get it four years later." "My birthday is Octujocember 38th. In other words, none of your nosy business!" "I am always so happy when I'm not the most OCD person in the room." "If at first you don't succeed, just be a bad example."

It's become a phrase popular enough. Why is it that people feel "awkward"? What is awkward? Are we slowly evolving into less and less personal communication that when confronted with a challenging situation we blush and tweet about it? Or do we simply like to chuckle at our fairly sarcastic lives once in a while? Nevertheless, this was a list worth gathering and conjuring. Some are experiences of my own, others from dear friends of mine. Feel free to add on; to be continued. That awkward moment when... 1. You say "Happy Birthday" to someone a day early. 2. "You try to pass someone in a narrow hall, and both of you keep choosing the same direction to pass." 3. "You say goodbye to someone, and make it way sincere, and then both of you leave in the same direction." 4. You don't understand why your hair isn't curling, then you plug in the iron. 5. "You're about to make a comment about someone when you see they're still in the...

ODE TO MY SOCKS Pablo Neruda Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder's hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin, Violent socks, my feet were two fish made of wool, two long sharks sea blue, shot through by one golden thread, two immense blackbirds, two cannons, my feet were honored in this way by these heavenly socks. They were so handsome for the first time my feet seemed to me unacceptable like two decrepit firemen, firemen unworthy of that woven fire, of those glowing socks. Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation to save them somewhere as schoolboys keep fireflies, as learned men collect sacred texts, I resisted the mad impulse to put them in a golden cage and each day give them birdseed and pieces of pink melon. Like explorers in the jungle who hand over the very rare green deer to the spit and eat...