Essays along the margins
The illusion of independence begins with the snip of the umbilical, is furthered with a slap, is fulfilled as we are weaned, walk, and then withdraw to our own beds; we lean into our own efforts, rise to our own challenges, inflate with what we perceive to be our personal successes, deflate before our personal defeats. We desire a fruit, …
Here’s the canvas of the heart: streaked with tears, warm rain that melts before it reaches skin, the ice it was contained within undone by sun.
And every lover brings as his or her gift another reflection of the quality or your loving, and the quantity of your love. Sometimes the arc of a love is as long as years, sometimes a lifetime. Or the music of a relationship may last some months, crescendo, soften, then complete: the dancers bow to one another, and leave the …
The beauty of travel is how you walked, not where you walked.
Samuel Pepys did not have a laptop; but if he did, imagine the number of words. I imagine also that the kinds of conversations between Sam and his digital ego. Cataloguing the mundane, the divine and the profane, the human attempts and the human failures, the hope that attends the former, and the regret which follows the latter. In …
So many people looking for new work these days. Not only because their position was economically eliminated, but also early-life or mid-life change, or a lack of satisfaction or fulfillment that has crept in over time. On a long mountain hike this past weekend, two of our companions spoke of their desire to move out …
"So is it study or is it art?" The first is a wick drawn by a practiced hand, straight through wax. Patience dipped again and again to fill out a candle's form, layer on layer for length, strength and stability. There is dedication in study, repeated practice like a mantra, mastery a form of devotion. You give yourself and …
I suggested yet again that our death is introduced when we are born, the seed of our departure planted upon our arrival, and perfect darkness as a backdrop for all the colors and sights and sounds of this little, lovely (hopefully at times seen as lovely) life. Can't I just hang that one up for once? No. I don't …
I haven’t written so many poems. Nor have I penned a single novel, though there is one waiting, and behind that one, who knows?, maybe another. I have been blessed with a few songs. I used to draw well, a lifetime ago. I am responsible for a half-carved Buddha, who patiently waits inside a few …
At first it is a passage of days, and you measure them in days from, your eyes and your heart reaching outward, and the familiar – perhaps the mundane – gently is displaced by the roll of the deck, the expanding horizon, the constancy of the wind, the salt on your lips. Run your tongue …
I don't seek painful experiences; but pain, and its companion-echo, anguish, find me. I suppose that, as often as not, this is due to unskillful navigation in the waters of life, whose shoals and reefs demand the best of a master sailor: hard to starboar–! Oh. Get out yer hammers and yer cotton caulking, lads; we're shippin' water! As …
The sun’s touch soft today, the air perfumed with sweetest taste of spring, simple, with no effort, the round globe leans toward its lover, longs for love, and every living thing becomes a blossom. I gave myself an hour – no more than an hour was needed – and left my labor to rest, set it on the desk, …