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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Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Thirty-one years ago on this night

 

May 11, 1998  (I was 53)

 

Thirty-one years ago on this night

about this time I became a father

twice and too dumb to be fearful

and too ignorant to have remembered

much of how it felt or what it meant,

and in the intervening years

too smart to think I could figure it out.

Too indifferent now to philosophy

to believe we ever arrive at truth

too numb to days to hope they add up

as they subtract

Too blind at night to see how we divide

as we multiply.

And certain it is better to be lost in now

than found at some future date;

better to be lost in now

than remembered as part of something gone.

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