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!

Sunday, June 5, 2022

My mother was on the Village Council

 

June 5, 2011  (I was 66)

 

My mother was on the Village Council

She first ran when I was twelve

I didn’t know she was going to do it

My wife is on the City Council

Been married twenty-five years before she ran

I didn’t know she was going to do it

I know I did not cause it

Forget the psychology of the subconscious

or purposeful co-incidence

It was not my fault

Really

I could never stand to sit

so long in long meetings

my mother to decide where the one

new street light would go

exactly

my wife to study survey consider

cross-town routes with freeway access

and judicial zoning to include affordable housing

but both of them mostly

to confront the guy whose pit bull broke

through the fence again

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