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.


Comments Welcome!

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Comic Angst

 

January 1, 1987  (I was 42) 

 

                  Comic Angst

Riding with the windows down and the radio on

in that springtime who needs a convertible to feel cool?

Not with the night taking its daylight savings time to arrive.

Not for one still too young to wear a softball uniform.

Not for one with a future but nothing to do Saturday night,

nothing to think about but something to dream.

 

With the windows down in the spring no one need be in the car.

The car and the universe and the moment move as one

and everything is harmonious because everything is not there.

No tedious transactions needed to maintain social survival.

No dependencies declaring individuality.

No distracted energy more and more precious.

 

No physical failure slows that automobile down.

There is no doubt coming in or going out of the windows of that auto.

Not that spring evening with the full moon already rising

and the stars intending to shine.

Not with those colors on the horizon and that presence in the night air.

Not with the knowledge, the belief, the rational obvious fact

that when the tank got empty you just filled it up again.

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