IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate how our species loves to tell stories. First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and McAllister streets…
Category: Writing
My own serious stuff; the craft itself; those who inspire me in it; the art of reading.
Allegiance Redux
A FEW YEARS AGO, I revised the Pledge of Allegiance — instead of stating support for a piece of cloth, it celebrates what that cloth stands for. In today’s hyper-partisan political and cultural climate, it’s important to be both precise…
Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Sing Glad Songs to the Memory of Groovy English Teachers
WHEN MRS. BOISVERT TOLD ME in ninth-grade English class that I had the soul of a poet, I grimaced. “I want to be a scientist,” I said. She had no answer to that. But she had answers to lots of…
Street Light (Fourth Indigent Sketch)
HE WAS A FLORID, BEEFY man in his mid-to-late 30s, perched on a high concrete bench in San Francisco’s lunchtime-crowded Justin Herman Plaza, and wearing a grey beltless trenchcoat tightly buttoned up to his thick neck. Every minute or so…
Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Sudden Car Door
BOMBING STEEPLY DOWNHILL ON SAN Francisco’s pedestrian-thick California Street while screaming “No brakes!” was just another day in my brief life as a late-1980s bike messenger. I had gotten into “the life” by happy accident. Having been fired from a…
On Blogorrhea (And Its Opposite)
ALTHOUGH I STILL CAN’T SIT for very long, I am also still happy that my seven-year writer’s block has evidently ended (albeit with the death of a close friend). But I will know that it’s really ended when I can…
Haiku: The Nameless Name
THAT-WHICH-SOME-CALL-“GOD“: Universal, non-dual. What is It for you?
Prosatio Silban and the Pernicious Wishes
PROSATIO SILBAN STOOD UP, WIPED his hands on his breeches and cursed mildly in the name of a minor god. If only this wheel hadn’t broken, he thought, I’d now be in many-harbored Soharis cooking fresh-caught fish for wealthy or…
Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.”
— Robert Frost
Of Tone-Outs, Turnouts and a Press Badge
IT’S HARD TO WATCH LIVES literally going up in smoke in order to tell other people about it. But on a professional level, it’s thrilling to see firefighters bringing order to chaos. When I worked for the Sonoma Index-Tribune between…
Metaphoraging Roundup: 2018
IF A GOOD FRIEND HADN’T died this year and cured me of a years-long writer’s block, I wouldn’t be posting this. But he did, so I am, proffering 2018’s Top 10 Viewed Pages and Posts at this writing: 1. Home…
Points of Honor, Literary and Otherwise
– STUFFING SENTENCES TO JUST UNDER their carrying capacity. – Never starting a blog post with “I.” – Writing exactly to required or desired length. – Being there on time. – Repeating verbatim anything someone wants said to another. –…