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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Saturday, December 4, 2021

Iconic things are the benchmarks of society

 

from this week in 2015  (I was 71)

Iconic things are the benchmarks of society

minor stabilities we take for granted

I’m not talking grand national monuments

I refer to the daily familiars that serve our craft

without reference to memorialization

 

The telephone evolved within a logical vision

for more than a century then morphed

into something different every year

and unrecognizable after five

The last thing you want to do with a phone is call

 

The key to the car or the front door

is no longer a tool to operate a mechanical lock

We gain entrance by unseen impulses

It changes the template in the way we think

We do not set the tumblers into motion

we depress a button and hope the order is sent

 

All rooms should have more books

than a rosary has beads

When you run your fingers over them

they recite a verse from within

a reason to justify the places they occupy

They signal an awareness of ideas

that continue to measure their relevance  

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