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, December 21, 2020

Nothing good has a brain

 

from this week in 2016 (I was 71)

 

Nothing good has a brain

Rocks are wonderful

Wood can be understood

whether it’s alive or dead

Who can doubt a raspberry

off its thorny bush

Some brainless things are bad

but ignorant of the fact

They must be judged by a bad brain

and the judgment affects them not

That with a brain must be evaluated from beyond

by something with a brain or worse

a plan gone terribly wrong

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