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, December 4, 2020

It is difficult to be stupid everyday

 

December 4, 2013  (I was 69)

 

It is difficult to be stupid everyday

I seem to forget how nearly every night

Just before I fall asleep I feel smartness creep in

I wake up clear-headed and practical

at times even ambitious and tolerant

perfectly willing to pass others with a smile

wishing them good morning as if it were mine to bestow

Soon I get to thinking change is possible

then encounter the complexity of inertia

a recollection of mindlessness at first

a low drone the scent of futility remembered

from history books and faded newspaper

the re-acquaintance with the shadow of doubt

who leans closer to whisper in the afternoon

to suggest it’s time to prepare a dinner of fatted sloth

and the recipe falls to mind step by step

beginning with a slow heat to render the fat

before stewing the meat in the amalgam of ingredients

that simmer into a singular tastelessness

I eat my fill directly from the pot in front of the TV

watching I think some game show where luck

decides whether someone wins or loses today

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