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.


Comments Welcome!

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

All the storybook lives are not in storybooks

 

November 24, 2012  (I was 68)

 

All the storybook lives are not in storybooks

The ones that are will fit into movies

whose conventional length has shrunk in my lifetime

from two hours to ninety minutes or less

a reduction of twenty-five percent

while life span has increased considerably

and we think more complexly so

there ought to be material for more involved

story-book lives in multifaceted detail

but we think we’ve seen it all

know how it should end

don’t like it when it doesn’t

like in our own lives

where heroes are as ambiguous as the side they’re on

Common local villainy is inconspicuous

lost among our blatant international piracies

in explosive color and surround sound

a cover-up on an epic scale

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