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, November 1, 2022

I never could do hard work

 

November 1, 2013  (I was 68)

 

I never could do hard work so I

did easy work.  Hark work had no

purposeful end for me.  Easy

work had a reason.  Something I
made would be fun later.  A place

I invented could be visited again.

Hard work felt like my life was ending.

The more I did the closer it got.

Hard work required a hiding place.

Sometimes others made hard work

harder.  They required an escape-

ownership of even a moment- two

breaths, a task at a distance.  Easy

work defined itself, made itself obvious

without mention.  Often I found myself

doing easy work with no awareness of

having begun.  The tools of easy work

are very light.  I improvised ways to

use them.  It is hard to be the cause

to produce the correct effect.  It is

easy to be the effect that wonders

at the cause.  I wonder at the cause. 

 

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