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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Sunday, November 20, 2022

Is it the command over another’s decline

 

November 20, 2007  (I was 63)

 

Is it the command over another’s decline

that makes one age?  It seems so.

Deciding what is to be discarded,

what was written that will never be read,

what in the closet will never be worn;

it makes one more than the specter of death.

I have discarded wardrobes of the soul,

eliminated expressions to a savable few.

The Grim Reaper is a heartless editor,   

humility a byproduct of playing that role.

Where is the repository of life?

How careless of any Grand Design

to leave it to those left behind,

to one who may have read Sound and Sense

but survived only through expedience.

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