Stepping out into the cool dawn, I went for a morning walk. The air, the foghorn from the bridge, the sound of seagulls above, and experiencing the city before it was fully awake began to feel like one of the better decisions I’ve made in a while. It reminded me of when I’ve traveled to…
Morning, August 26, 2025
At 6am, the trash truck rumbles and clanks, hisses and lurches. I’ve been up since 5 when I woke from a dream in which I was arguing with a family member about why I don’t have any groceries – specifically, I was out of butter and they wanted breakfast and they were disappointed in me….
On Seeing Ben Harper, Again
By 9am I had already finished my second cup of coffee, read a few poems, and tried to write a few reasonable lines: something about a Carolina moon, the warmth of late September, drinking wine from mason jars on a wooden porch. The lines went nowhere. I read six or seven poems from my draft…
Bigness, Smallness
Ooof! Today, the contradictions within are doing a do-si-do. My square dance brain is on the wobble. I can’t get my thinking straight on anything. The monkey mind has gone berserk. In one hand it’s eating a banana. The other is flinging shit at the walls. In the cartoon version of this, I look like…
On Turning Fifty-One
Two waffles, two cups of coffee – black. An hour or two or three of reading and writing and reflection. The morning feels cool like an east coast autumn day. I can almost smell the papery mustiness of the used book shop in State College, the leafy path by the canal in Yardley, the crisp…
Barkeep, Another Beer Please
The man sitting next to me – older with a beer belly, balding and gray, wearing a blue button down shirt tucked into his jeans – slurred his words and sang out loud to the country tunes he had put on the juke box. When he coughed and sneezed and hiccuped, he would drop his…
When in SF…
When I woke up on Saturday morning and left my house for the Haight where I help out with a food pantry, I hadn’t planned on spending the next twelve or thirteen hours in that part of the city. In fact, I had started walking home around 11am thinking I’d have some lunch and go…
Buckets
I spent far too much of my Sunday wrestling with words in an attempt to understand my current state of mind. The wrestling was fine in the morning, almost enjoyable, but by lunchtime, I felt stuck and as though the day was slipping away from me. I could feel a funk coming on. I went…
Slow to Get Going
10:28am. Muffled through the ceiling, my upstairs neighbor is laughing and suddenly I’m aware of how few times I’ve used the word uproariously. Scrolling through profiles on my phone, I see a photo of a woman standing in front of bales of hay and I’m reminded of summer concerts on the farm in the fading…
Story Fest
On Saturday night, I went to a reading of sorts. Story Fest brought together a handful of Bay Area journalists on a stage occasionally accompanied by a trio (or was it quartet) of musicians. The stories were touching and funny, shocking and earnest. One told of coming to San Francisco chasing her dream of being…
That Sounds Like…
The song in my head was “On the Road Again” by Canned Heat. But then the song morphed to “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” by Chris Isaak. It morphed one more time to “Gold on the Ceiling” by the Black Keys. Of the three, the Black Keys song is the least similar. Where my…
Drafting and Drifting
The last thing I shared on this site was on June 9. I’ve attempted some form of writing at least 5 other times since then. Those attempts sit among the list of “drafts.” Looking at the months of May and June, I’ve shared 11 posts, and have another 15 that I never got around to…