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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Wednesday, November 2, 2022

The learning of the new

 

from this week in November 2008  (I was 63)

 

The learning of the new

comes not from the ground

not the baked clay of California

nor the black loam of Minnesota

nor the pyritic glass of Hawaii

The few foreign grounds I’ve walked upon

seem not much different

in towns and cities built over

with shops and churches

And in the country field and forest

yield as ever the fragrant must

of knowledge that has always been

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