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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Monday, November 7, 2022

Later that year he died but before that

 

November 7, 2017   (I was 72)

 

Later that year he died but before that

he had designed and made a model house

of balsa frame and beams an accomplishment

a step up for a draftsman’s dream of architecture

I didn’t know he’d done it nor the hours it took

too young to have an understanding of any of it

From the backseat of the car I watched

He carried it out the door of the office in the rain

both arms under it as if he held the earth beneath  

I’m sure I saw him smile coming through the wet until

I saw him slip and toss it airborne for ghastly seconds

before it shattered and splintered between us

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