Category: Personal

i was going to write about what i imagine it will be like to live in leiden, the netherlands. but it’s been snowing all day and i have on christmas music. i’ve done a little decorating, have the candles lit, and poured a glass of red wine.

i’ll be out of this place in a few weeks. life or time or whatever it is keeps us moving…  and we seem never to stop making changes. my nephew ryan turned 10 today. on christmas day, i’ll be 53. holy fucking moly.

but tonight, i’m happy. i love how snow quiets things down. slows things down. i love milky night skies and how moon glow backlights falling, floating drop_lets. i love snowstorms and being out with my dog. I love the way the snow catches in his fur and how he rolls on his back. i love the sun coming out after a big storm… and the glint and sparkle of the snow snow snow.

i love the way a house can smell warm when you come back inside. oh… and sometimes it’s so nice to curl up into blankets and take a nap. not really sleep though, but how you feel in those perfect moments between sleeping and waking.

i decided i should take some pictures of my little cottage-like apartment, with my few christmas decorations and the abundance of snow outside, and show you all where i am right now and where i won’t be for much longer.

and yet, right now i’m so fully here. not fully grasping deconstructing all of this. walking away from each part is an odd thing. how it all changes and the things that held you in orbit have disappeared. and you walk away. energy going forward in light years or heavy years. the drag of memory, holding you still. making you think you’re still where you’re not. it will all melt like the snow outside. the landscape. the way it looks right now. it will never be that way again.

big chest-heaving sigh.

and i’m up in five minutes and maybe i’ll just keep writing this in the comments. as i chase after myself. as i try to let go and grab onto something new, all at the same time.

hey. here i am. that’s funny now. here i am. until i melt away.

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my favorite things



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Yes, that’s correct, I’m one of those anal retentive writers who believe in spelling and capitalization and punctuation and grammar.  Links lend credibility and context.

Sometimes people mistake my style for stream of consciousness.  They would be surprised to learn that almost everything is outlined and constructed.  What I do is tell stories, like Garrison Keillor or Mark Twain or Dashiell Hammett.  Because most of them do in fact come from personal experience while they have a middle, they seldom have a firm beginning or end; though I am always trying to make a point.

In the beginning.  Where is that exactly?  First the Earth was formed, then the dinosaurs came and Jesus rode them like ponies.  Homer started his poems in medias res and at the beginning we are on the shores of Troy or Ithaca and have the great relief for the rest of the tedious tale that our hero makes it that far at least, so we have no serious concerns for his welfare.

Much of the rest may seem mere wandering flashbacks but because the reader has peeked ahead they are assured they will eventually get somewhere.

So every essay is also all about process as long as you learn from it.

Here I’ve been experimenting with form, trying to write shorter, and more political, and shorter AND more political.  An ideal Front Page piece will have 200 to 500 words and at least one graphic or blockquote for visual interest. That’s about 4 or five paragraphs.  Not much time to get to the point.

Although I had lived, and hiked, and backpacked in the Southwest for twenty or so years, encounters with rattlesnakes were pretty rare. If one sees snakes at all, they’re usually stretched across a trail or road.  I had sure never encountered one where it posed a problem, like crawling into someones sleeping bag. The closest anyone I knew ever came was when I was hiking with my nephew, he once sat on a large large rock that had a rattler underneath.  When it rattled, he moved.  This is generally considered appropriate behavior.  He might have been maybe a little too excited,  and ran much farther than he needed to, but the move-away–leave-it-alone strategy is all one really needs to do in most cases.  The people that do get bitten are usually young, drunk, and male.  

Most people in rural areas with great hideouts like barns and woodpiles, will usually handle rattlesnake encounters with matter-of-fact blowing them away with a shotgun.

I somehow got a job at a nature sanctuary near a small town and moved there from Tucson.  I had been a volunteer for a few years and Jerry, the manager, finally had the funding to hire some help.   Meetings with rattlesnakes increased.

Although I had lived, and hiked, and backpacked in the Southwest for twenty or so years, encounters with rattlesnakes were pretty rare. If one sees snakes at all, they’re usually stretched across a trail or road.  I had sure never encountered one where it posed a problem, like crawling into someones sleeping bag. The closest anyone I knew ever came was when I was hiking with my nephew, he once sat on a large large rock that had a rattler underneath.  When it rattled, he moved.  This is generally considered appropriate behavior.  He might have been maybe a little too excited,  and ran much farther than he needed to, but the move-away–leave-it-alone strategy is all one really needs to do in most cases.  The people that do get bitten are usually young, drunk, and male.  

Most people in rural areas with great hideouts like barns and woodpiles, will usually handle rattlesnake encounters with matter-of-fact blowing them away with a shotgun.

I somehow got a job at a nature sanctuary near a small town and moved there from Tucson.  I had been a volunteer for a few years and Jerry, the manager, finally had the funding to hire some help.   Meetings with rattlesnakes increased.

Thanksgiving is always a very strange time, for me. Sixteen years ago, the day before Thanksgiving, I was diagnosed with cancer.

Several weeks later, after the chemo had eliminated the superficial symptoms, and before it had completely debilitated me, I wrote the following:

I asked for a horse the Christmas I was four and was not fooled by the black and white wooden facsimile on springy-thingies I got instead.  That was my first brush with heartbreak.  I did not know to consider the children who got squat, and to be grateful.

My next heartbreak was when one of my older brothers told me there was no Santa, this the night before Christmas when I was six.

We lived in Laos when I was eight and I made a deal with my dad to pay for half the price of a horse if I saved up the other half.  Fifty bucks was the going rate for riding horses in Laos, took me nearly a year to save the twenty-five.  Found a horse and paid for it, we were supposed to pick it up in a week once it was saddle broken.  That was a Sunday.  The Sunday I was to take possession I awoke to the sound of machine-gun fire and the rumble of tanks running up and down the road in front of our house.  There had been a coup.  The fighting would rage for another year.  I was not long for Laos and I never saw my horse again.

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“What is a LEADER?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“A LEADER isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. It’s realizing that every experience develops some latent force within you.¹ You begin to understand that vision is the art of seeing the invisible² so that when you want to build a wagon, you don’t gather the other toys to collect wood or assign them tasks, but rather you teach them to long for ways to traverse the endless immensity of the backyard.³ Then you become a LEADER.”

there are times for anger. and action. there are times for confusion and catastrophe. there used to be… time for love.

yet is seems much of my time has been spent feeling overcome by the weight of so many bad things happening all at once that it….

… makes me forget why i’m so angry… because i love.

or why i feel this need to fight against changing winds, rising seas, cultural hatred, and eve_vree_thing else that darkens the sun… because i love