The Key Shouldn’t Cost More than the Treasure it Unlocks
For each of more than 400 days, I wrote and published at least 1,000 words on a site that no longer exists. I still have most of the posts stashed away and reread one every now again. The following was…
Before the Lips Go Still
I don’t know how or when it happened, but at some point in life, I began to let myself have my own opinions. I reached a point at which I became okay with not liking something I was told I…
Watch Your Language
One of these days, I’ll get to It’s Not About Food by Carol Normandie and Laurelee Roark. It’s there on my shelf. If I stand up and take a few steps, I can have it in my hot little hand before you…
Are You Threatening Me?
The husband of a sister-in-law wore a t-shirt emblazoned with a vintage political “pairing” to the most recent family Christmas gathering: “Reagan/Bush 84.” This fellow and I were standing in the kitchen, where the conversation was lagging. Therefore, I decided…
Taking a Safety
I got to the computer yesterday by way of Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Ensouling Language, a book I am still s-l-o-w-l-y making my way through (and now that I’ve shared it with Dennis, it’s often in his office, where I don’t…
Late Nights and Bad Memories
It’s a gorgeous, sunny day with blue skies, white snow, and green trees out my window. The driveway could use some shoveling, so I’m sure I’ll be out in the fresh air before the dark descends around 5:00, which feels…
We Are All Afraid
We are all afraid. Despite that, and because of that, we tell our stories. We tell them to figure out who the hell we are, and when that fails, we read other people’s stories in the hopes that they can…
What is Your Name?
Is name just another word for label? No. The two could not be more different, but we get lazy and interchangeably use words that are fundamentally incompatible. A name places you in the universe. It makes it clear that you…
Of Men and Misunderstanding
To Share or Not to Share Two days ago, I began thinking in earnest about the balance between silence and expression. I am coming to understand how essential It is to express oneself and to be free to express oneself,…
Fear and Substack
Fear is a formidable beast. Like most things in life, though, it has its good points and its bad. Fear often preserves our very lives, but—likely, more regularly—it keeps us from living. I try to remind myself that fear seldom…
Competition? Cooperation?
The artist who acts as if he could have conceived his art by himself, sealed off from other artists, is stupid—he merely tries to conform to the idiotic romantic image of the artists as primeval energy, as a demiurge. The continual…
The Touch of the Unknown
I don’t know that a year can go by without me vowing, again, to read all the poems in The Giant Book of Poetry (edited by William H. Roetzheim) that I bought in 2011, when I decided to embark upon…
