Four, maybe five, nights ago, and again the following morning, I sat in front of a blank “page” and a blinking cursor. If the screen were blue, this could have been an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. – except for all that boy genius doctor stuff… and all the other stuff in the show… and…
A Pocket Full of Longing and a Head Full of Song
The song in my head, a song that’s been out for a few years but is new to me, is Orville Peck’s “Dead of Night.” The morning’s thread of poetry and literary quotes is littered with the ashes of September. These days, everything is fading light and longing. Ray Bradbury wrote, “It was September. In…
Legacy and Rimbaud
At 5:34am, I’m sitting on the sofa just beginning my second cup of coffee and contemplating those old, needling notions of life’s wandering pathways and legacy. The upstairs neighbor has just turned on the shower. The foghorn bellows. It’s dark outside. I was reading the poem, “Shatterings,” by Stephen Dunn when a reference to the…
September Feels
September. It’s mid-month. The days have grown cool. In unexpected bursts, the winds whip and whistle. The shift is subtle, and I’ve been told it’s usually warmer than this. I can already tell I’m going to miss the crisp air of the east coast fall, the smell of cornfields in the night under a harvest…
Aging in Place
At the breakfast table in the morning dark just before dawn, I read a sweet and slightly sentimental poem. It’s called “Aging in Place” and is about an older man who, upon seeing his wife’s bare shoulder, realizes he still lusts after her the way he did when they were in their 20s. And much…
Of Rabbit Holes and Contemplations
For a significant part of my morning, I fell down the rabbit hole of cleaning out old emails and filing away others. My Gmail account has over 11k emails in it. It was over 12k when I started (I deleted or moved over 500). I was looking for an email from my job search back…
Fall Approaches: Phone Dump
For the past two weeks, I’ve been checked out. I’ve done very little reading or writing and very little job searching. I’ve taken fewer city walks and spent fewer hours on sun-drenched benches by the water. Instead, I went nocturnal. I’ve spent my days inside wasting time on my computer. I’ve spent my nights out…
Lacks Inner Resources
In the middle of reading some poems by one of my favorite poets, Stephen Dunn, I pause to think about the book as though I might have the skill or ambition to comment on it. I possess neither. I bought the book a few weeks ago when my father and I visited City Lights on…
It’s Raining Dogs
It’s overcast. We have plenty of gray days, but this morning, the clouds look like rain clouds. I feel as though I’m being given permission to stay in, to drink coffee slowly, to read or take a nap or write or just stare out the window. I do those things on nice days too, but…
Often, I Forget the Details…
From Dean Young’s poem “Flamenco,” a poem I had dog-eared, I underlined and asterisked the line, “a collection of eternal accidents.” It’s an interesting way to think of life, a series of accidents, most of which are forgotten but no less consequential. Eternal – what followed the accident was, necessarily, the rest of life. I…
Done Got Old: The Big Five-Oh
August 12, 2024 At 7am, it’s cool and gray outside – the temperatures are in the low fifties (I feel like there’s an age joke in there somewhere). Today is my birthday. Today I turn 50. The plan for the day is a late breakfast with my dad, hang around a bit, and then Uber…
This Golden Sun Shines for Me
I’ve been living in San Francisco for nine months – ten if you count the three weeks I lived in a hotel. Aside from a deep appreciation for the beauty and character of this city, I don’t have much to show for my ten months here: no girlfriend, no job, no newly published poems, stories,…