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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Thursday, November 21, 2019

Before this


November 21, 1974  (I was 30)

Before this
the wind blew straight down.
Hairstyles changed.
Some wondered when it would blow up.
The sheep didn’t care
the wool was over their eyes.
Skyscrapers?   Banal.
Who could look up?
The wind blew straight down;
we couldn’t lift the manhole covers.
Airlines were suddenly grounded;
stocks fell.
The waters were calm.
Sir Edmund Hillary was called a cheat.
Some old folks were caught prone.
How long can this keep up? became the joke.
The wind blew straight down.
It seemed like it would happen forever,
yet here we still are.
I never ate so many potatoes.
I never realized Newtonian physics
could be so ethereal,
and I hadn’t believed
chaos could be so quickly accommodated.
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