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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Sunday, January 31, 2021

There are worse virtues than courtesy

 

from this week in January, 1976  (I was 31)

 

There are worse virtues than courtesy

even for the revolutionary.

In fact, identifying the proper enemy

before opening fire

becomes an essential weapon

to insure sympathy for the cause.

How often failure to exercise this mere gesture

is read in the biographies of dead soldiers

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