The other day, an old friend texted a picture of the two of us and wrote, “you used to be hefty.” I sent back a photo of Wilford Brimley and said now I’m old and hefty. Fun fact: though he looked much older, Brimley was not quite 51 years old when Cocoon was released (I’m…
Category: Dear Diary
The Dog, Again
Yesterday, I wrote about the dog and the walks we have. Given that we live together, it’s a topic from time to time. We take two walks a day – every day. Quite often, they’re short walks because it’s cold and windy here for five or six months of the year. Because the roads were…
The Come Down
This is the come down. The moment of crashing back to reality where Saturday night entails listening to some music and Sunday will be spent doing chores and prepping for the week ahead. After a week of urban exploring, meeting new people, eating and drinking, and sitting outside at cafés in the sun, I am…
Be Here, Now.
I’m still caught off guard by how quickly negative emotions or something approaching nervous dread can creep in, pour themselves a drink, and settle in on the couch with feet up as though they own the place. Minor setbacks in the face of major change, or small realizations that none of this is going to…
Lovely, but Fleeting
After a full day of travel (3+ hours in the car and close to 7 hours on a plane), I arrived in San Francisco Saturday night. I had just enough time to check in to my hotel and Uber my way over to Oakland for a dinner date. We hit it off well, and had…
Unqualified
Sometimes I think I’m not really qualified for this job,the job of my life, I mean. “Homework” by Tony Hoagland Today, I felt wholly unqualified for life. I bounced between trying to write poetry, trying to write a post about trauma, processing the potential challenges of moving (tied to the post about trauma), reading poetry,…
Sometimes Expecting the Worst
Oof. On Twitter, I saw a poet say she had time to provide feedback on a few poems (for a fee). She was being recommended by someone else who said that after incorporating the feedback, all of the poems were accepted for publication at various literary journals. Despite being turned off by the prospect of…
The Day after Valentine’s Day (2023)
Yesterday, I thought about writing a Valentine’s Day post, or an anti-Valentine’s Day post. I also thought about doing a phone dump of screenshots of love poems (which quite often aren’t “love” poems). Apparently, the former poet laureate, Billy Collins, has been doing a video blog or podcast or something like that in which he…
Maps and Memories
I feel like I could have or should have been able to predict my afternoon slide into a slump. A slump that has, somewhat intentionally, stretched into an evening slump with a glass of wine. I wish I could describe the feeling better. It’s a bit of a hollow feeling and at times a desire…
A Good Week
It’s been a good week. Though it’s only part-way over and there’s still plenty of time for Chekhov’s hammer to wreak havoc: Every happy man should have some one with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will…
Happy Sunday Y’all
You might as well turn back now. This is one of those list/update posts. As in I’m not sure I have anything to say, but having spent a day in solitude with good music and good books, I feel compelled to say something. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of songs from the band…
Against Routine
I have routines – lots of them. I say that I keep them or use them as a way to free up mental space for other things. Given my mental output, I’m not sure it’s working. I eat the same thing for breakfast almost every day: two waffles and two cups of coffee. On the…