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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Monday, February 17, 2020

I have given up things


February 17,1998  (I was 53)

I have given up things   
I did not want to quit,
have forsaken comforts
of personal essence.
Everyone does a bit of this,
leaving behind true things;
sacrifice we call it
in hope to understand
a certain nobility in the act.
They are deletions
as certain as grave sites.
We learn to live around them
Though tastes have strong memory.
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