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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Wednesday, May 18, 2022

I’ve played in the realms of altered perceptions

 

From this week in May, 2017 (I was 72)

 

I’ve played in the realms of altered perceptions

most of the years of my life

crossing the seams of seems to escape

until I no longer need radical means

There are many internal avenues of departure

obvious and subtle and easily ignored

by our fascination with the exotic

when every room is a different library

and every scene a new environ to inhabit

In mechanical sense when the equipment differs

an altered product is produced

Minor movement changes point of view

Reaching an age where shadow monkeys shared

might raise suspicion of diminished capacities

rather than a vision of all that’s there

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