After a decent day, one in which I felt fairly present, last night was emotionally mixed. I jotted down the note “these were the unbalanced days that made up the year without balance.” Though balance wasn’t really the word I wanted to use, I wanted to get at the notion of feeling joy in experiencing…
THE ORDER OF DISORDER
One reason I’ve started using a notebook / journal is because I often have trouble keeping my thoughts straight. I don’t think I have some brilliant mind… but, while I try to remain humble, I have gradually fallen in love with the way I think and process… which at times sets off a loop of…
OF JOURNALS AND SECRETS AND TINY DISCOVERIES
Writing that the sky was marbled seemed too easy (and honestly I’m not sure it qualified as marbled). I found myself searching for something better. I called it an army of animals shrouded in shapes (unanimal like) marching towards the sunrise. I’m not sure how accurate that description is. For one thing, the sun is…
SUNDAY EVENING COMING DOWN
Seven or eight birds circle high riding the updrafts in front of the white-gray backdrop of clouds. The cloud cover gives the planes an extra umph, echo, and roar as the they take off. One every two minutes – most certainly FedEx – headquartered here in Memphis. The trees outside, young oaks not more than…
STEPHEN DUNN
On April 5, 2000, I wrote my first and only Amazon review. 5 stars. Having read most of Dunn’s poetry, and in particular, having read this book several times, I find that Dunn is a writer I can always come back to. His style is unique, and always gets to the crux of what seems…
DATING, MEN, AND DANCING ALONE
First, please pay attention to the comma in the titles. Once again I wrote up a post and then shelved it. This time, I never got around to hitting submit. I ran out of steam, and no longer wanted to make the point I had set out to make. It was an attempt to understand…
CONFABULATION AND CONFLAGRATION
There are mornings when my mind is slow to fully…. I wanted to write confabulate when I was really thinking of conflagration. An interesting mix up. Confabulation: a symptom of various memory disorders in which made-up stories fill in any gaps in memory. That’s not what I meant, instead I was thinking of how, when…
AN A FOR EFFORT
I’m up earlier than I’d like to be (Nick the cat, puking). Yesterday ended up crashing and burning (at least in terms of productivity). I never got my momentum back after the rejection email. I went back and re-read the post I was writing, but couldn’t quite pick the train of thought back up… (I…
THOUGHTS ON CHANGE (INTERRUPTED)
The most recent thing my ex-fiancee, B, posted on her blog (back in November) was something along the lines of trying to remember who she was before she fell in love, or maybe that’s who she has always been. I’m reminded of it this morning as I’ve been contemplating my own journey back to myself….
OF WIND AND SAILS
Well… that didn’t take long. I was in the middle of writing something (sure to be profound) about change when an email popped up from the journal I submitted to last night. Being of little will power and unsound mind, I opened it up to read the form rejection. I remember way back when I…
IF THIS ISN’T NICE…
Tiny moments of joy, amusement, and recognition. That is what art can do when it speaks to you – at least it’s what it does for me. I am thinking of the poems I started to read this morning, but for me, it also applies to music, other writing, and visual arts as well. There…
FINISHING WITH A WHIMPER
Mindfulness be damned…. while my night became considerably less full of the annoyances that were putting me in a bad mood earlier- I sort of fell in to a state of bummed paralysis fueled by indecision. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to venture out to get more wine or beer (I stayed in). I…