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!

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

You say you want to migrate to Mars

 

from this week in August, 2019  (I was 74)

 

You say you want to migrate to Mars

Even at my most adventurous

I wouldn’t accompany you to Best Buy

Let alone a planet named for a War God

Left alone to my own device

I’ll become a citizen of the Old World

while you forage in the Newer Frontier

We’ll refer to you as The Colonies

and repeat exaggerated stories

of your encounters with the Natives

Not even your discovery of gold and platinum

would lure me to share your artificial atmosphere

 

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