Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
It often takes years, and sometimes never; the child that has grown up, lived independently for some time, and has asserted his or her separation and personality still remains a child in the mind of the parent. The image we hold often far extends beyond the reality that has changed and circumstances have dictated; it is that which remains as the final vestige of what we yearn for, steadfastly refuse to surrender, […]
Whether everyone without exception experiences it, one can never tell. For some, it comes in a subtle, slow manner, approaching at the beginning of, somewhere in the middle, or near the end when the long days of cold and darkness seem to have pervaded for too long that it has extinguished any memories of summer days and the sound of lapping waves in the heat of August. […]
They are heard and often unseen; a scratch somewhere from the far corner of the room; a blur along the space between the couch and the wall; and the mouse in the night scurries along, making some amount of noise more greatly enhanced when the quietude of a late evening descends upon us. Should we put out a mouse trap? The problem with that is that the dogs might come down in the middle of the night, smell the cheese and get his nose trapped and yowl with pain, waking everyone up. […]
Keeps; keeping; kept; the endurance of retention reflects the vitality of human obstinacy. To retain, to own, to possess; in the present tense, present simple passive, present perfect passive, past perfect passive, present modal, past modal, and a dozen other forms of grammatical conundrums. It is the action of owning, maintaining or possessing; often, with implications of forceful protectiveness despite demands of rightful ownership by third parties. “He kept it!” “He keeps coming back!” […]
As children, many are taught that life’s promise is unlimited in potentiality, full in its discourse of uncharted waters, and expansive in its promise for tomorrow. Somewhere, in middle-to-late years, we begin to have a somewhat more “balanced” view: not of fullness merely painted with hope and promise, but with graffiti unasked for, undesired and unwanted: the perverse side of fullness. Life can indeed contain and present a “full plate” (as metaphors go), but the question then becomes: What is on that plate? […]
It is the ultimate principle of substantive minimalism, where extraneous and peripheral elements should be eradicated unless used, essential, or otherwise central to the narrative. Teasing merely for the sake of itself is denied; a serious venture if always pursued, and open honesty with the audience forever relied upon. Chekhov disdained and avoided the superfluous; his short stories and other works were paradigms of linguistic economy, where words were valued and cherished, without room left for an unused element. […]
The self-containment of society has reached a point of no return; when the universe of virtual reality becomes the focus of dominant conversation, where movies depicting historical events replace the factual narrative of serious discourse; of twitter terminals constituting serious haikus of accepted profundities; the age of human innovation and creative destiny has indeed come to an end. […]