The Key to Impressing People

I was hard at work prepping for a school fundraiser at my house.

I had just finished calibrating the stereo and microphones. I still needed to set up the auxiliary A/V system (just in case), make blackberry rosemary syrup for the cocktails, trim back the ivy on the stoop, vacuum t… Read more...

Go On.

When someone breaks something of ours – a thief cracking our window, a boss changing our schedule, a loved one not showing up — we blame them for disrupting our way of being. We villify them.

And perhaps we are right. Maybe they are the evil in our hero’s quest.

B… Read more...

Some Things Never Change

Even as a child,

I’d leave behind the chaos of the monkey bars at recess

and go lay down in the shaded dark green grass by an abandoned remnant of playground equipment: a lone pole with a chain attached at the top.

And I’d listen to the sound of the chain clanging into t… Read more...

The Plight of Pain

Textured backdrop of soft crumpled textile in darkness

I am pain.

I cannot survive in the light

so I scurry into the corners, into the depths of souls,

swimming in guts

where it’s blacker than the darkest night.

And there, I molt and grow, whether I want to or not.

See, that’s the thing about me:

I’m not trying to hurt any… Read more...

Picking Out Images

Man in black suit jacket holding black leather bag

You can learn a lot about humanity when picking out images for your blog.

Plug in the word “kind” and you’ll see a bunch of people with animals.
(Hey! What about people with people?)

Put in “listen” and you get a bunch of people with headphones
(the exac… Read more...

Finishing Dreams

Child walking on grass path

Whether good or bad,

dreams get into us.

We’ve all had the experience of waking up

or being woken up

in the middle of a dream,

forced to put that dream aside

for reality.

Incomplete dreams are like incomplete conversations,

a puzzle still in pieces.

Freud called them unfulfilled wis… Read more...

The Fire in 7th Grade

7th grade interview about a fire

My friend found old news footage of a fire in our 7th-grade classroom. The teacher, one of my favorites, was trying to take chlorophyll out of a leaf. Alcohol got on the hot plate and, BOOM, big explosion.

In the newscast, after some panning shots of the charred classroom, the re… Read more...