IF YOU WANT YOUR NEW and unprecedented Big Event to be a sure-fire failure, bill it as the “First Annual.”
Tag: moments
All that we ever really have.
“Room 101 Amusement Park”
RELAXING IN PUBLIC CAN SOMETIMES bring unexpected consequences. Seated in the Walnut Creek BART station in the spring of 1980, I was reading my well-thumbed copy of 1984. So engrossed was I in Orwell’s pessimistic prose that I didn’t hear…
“You Can’t Avoid the Void!”
IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER WHERE or when I was, beyond that it was a high place from which I felt an overwhelming urge to jump. I felt neither depressed nor sad nor suicidal. But I did feel scared, though mostly…
Points of Honor, Literary and Otherwise
– STUFFING SENTENCES TO CARRYING CAPACITY. – Never starting a blog post (or sermon) with “I.” – Punctuality. – Creative segues. – Repeating verbatim whatever someone wants said to another. – That only what I actually heard appears inside quotation…
Shock Absorber
THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 6, 2024 gave me the biggest and most horrific shock of my sixty-two years. I won’t go into why, because half the country already knows why, and those processing the same emotions could use fewer words…
A Secret of Life
WHEN YOU’RE TALKING WITH SOMEONE, ask yourself: “How can I meet this person’s needs right now?“
Confessions of a Sidewalk Astronomer
THERE ARE TWO TELESCOPES IN my living room, a third in a backpack in my bedroom closet, and a pair of astronomical binoculars on the bookcase near the front door. “Why so many?” you may ask. Easy answer: I am…
Why Am I Still Here?
BARRING ANY UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, I will celebrate my 62nd birthday tomorrow. Leading me to ask: “How did THAT happen?” As a child of the 1970s and very early ’80s, my gentle nihilism is understandable. It was a period marked by…
I’m not here. I’m an event. I’m an improbable coalescence of stardust enjoying one fleeting, glorious dance through the cosmos before … poof.”
— Adrian Bliss
5 Thoughts: Lifechangers
0. YOU ARE ON A PATH. Suddenly, something knocks you onto another one. Here are five (of my many) “somethings.” 1. 2001: A space odyssey. At the tender age of six, my mind was blown, by what I could not…
Free Verse: “And God Said”
SEEK ME, EACH OF YOU, in your own way. And when you find Me? Prove it: Leave each other the hell alone. originally published: 2011.06.04
We’re all just raindrops on a windshield.”
— Jerry Seinfeld, to Michael Richards in “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”