Escape Velocity

Ever been approached by someone while walking alone on a dark street late at night?
There's an instant of unease where, on the cusp of fight-or-flight, the body makes a split, subliminal decision on whether this figure before it is friend or foe. More often than not, the stranger passes or just asks for change or a cigarette, and the net result of the encounter is a residually fluttering heartbeat.

I've been wondering what it must have felt like to be on the space shuttle Discovery approaching the atmosphere, not entirely sure if your battered vessel would make it through to the ground.

A friend of mine was robbed the other day.

Three times in the last two weeks have strange, unintelligible men come rapping on my front door, or my window. I, like a fool, open up.

They're searching bags on the subways these days, though we all know it won't do any good.

Nagasaki remembered the atom bomb today.

If you were sucked into a black hole and looking outward, chances are things wouldn't look so different - after all, light can still get in even if it can't get out. You might not notice much had changed until the gravitational force tore you apart.