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 17, 2022

I’m in the van in a thunderstorm

 

from this week in May, 2012  (I was 67)

 

I’m in the van in a thunderstorm

At Leopard’s Chase Golf Course

A woman in black spandex trimmed in red

walks toward the cart barn with a purpose

A young man in a red polo shirt meets her

She has a glove on her left hand

After an exchange of words and gestures

they get into a cart together and ride

back toward me on the cart path

I hear her say as they pass

“My whole life is in that cell phone.”

He says, “Here’s what we do when this happens,”

They splash up the cart path from green to tee

It reminds me of a time I never did find

the keys to the rental van

I was more frantic than she

even though my whole life was not involved

and the sky was not pitching rain

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