I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Friday, September 27, 2019

late night in Long Beach


September 27, 2012  (I was 67)

late night in Long Beach
reading Shunryo Suzuki’s, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

The swinging door of the throat
the singularity of duality
To hear a dumpster diver in the alley
is to smell the dumpster into which I do not dive
To not read the book I read
the diver becomes one of my characters
working in my alley making noise
stirring up scents he does not smell
until he sees the reading light in my window
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