Dance to the Music
Note: This piece was written one week ago, at Tierra Del Mar on the Oregon coast, in a cottage shared with my son Spenser. Someone asked me what it’s like to be 70. Is that a question? Is this a multiple choice test? In seventh grade a few of my more devilish classmates stuffed me…
Billy MacDonald
I graduated from Cape Cod Community College in the spring of 1969 and transferred up to Salem State. My high school classmate Ricky Fleming was in the same circumstance, and we found an apartment together in Marblehead. I hitchhiked back and forth to and from the college. Maybe a couple of months after I’d started…
From a Deck at the Coast
I’m sitting out here in/under the abundant sun and the idea comes to me that I don’t have anything to say. Seriously. I have thoughts, I have opinions, I suppose like everyone. But in terms of trying to say something which has value and is worthy of asking for peoples’ time? Nah, not so much.…
Forecasts
It wouldn’t take long to clear off the ping pong table for use today and possibly tomorrow as well. I had the thought upstairs, a short while ago, to delay the trip to the coast for a day, seriously consider a Wednesday morning departure after looking at the forecast on my phone. It’s up for…
Note to Self
I’ve been reading a book on the writing of short stories. A ‘How To’ book. And in the reading absorbed The need – I have a need – to sit at the keyboard, my keyboard with paint splatters all over it, with the intention to tell a story, hopefully a story which will draw…
Thoughts Unbidden on a Rainy Sunday
One piece of good news, now that the rains have returned, is I do not need to lean over for extended periods to water the vegetables. This is a good thing for my back. Another piece of good news is/was me reading the Andre Dubus piece on short-story writing in the book on that subject…
800 Acts of Potential Portuguese Kindness
Timed – 17:45: And yesterday I was lost in thought all about kindness. I’d like to think it’s a natural inclination – pretty sure it is. Okay, a quick one here, well as quick as 17:45 flows by. Was thinking of the opening line I wrote last night and then the second line earlier this…
Morning Pages Pouring
Friday, Aug 30: “It’s what I thought the first time I read that blog back when you started it …that you should have your own news outlet it and really be hammering away @ that aspect of your creative essence! There seems more than the painting something REALLY DEEP AND PROFOUNDLY POWER FILLED SCREAMING TO…
Seventh Morning, San Diego
Back here this morning at the in-laws, some 13 miles out into San Diego County, the sounds of the early morning – the dawning music – so very different from our last five mornings at the beach. Upon first awakening, and noticing stars out and up from the back slider, so as to indicate no…
Sixth Morning, San Diego
Today is my sister Nancy’s birthday. She’s still younger than me. She is there, celebrating her life anniversary, back in our hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts – hard by the salt water known as Buzzards Bay. Nancy refrained from coming back to our hometown for many of the years of her life, thought it was lacking…
Fifth Morning, San Diego
Well, first this feels like a tangel this forest – Wow, start again, start over, try to match each word I am considering with what I am copying down here. In this morning’s Morning Pages, where now filling three pages is feeling like something near an extraordinary challenge. Sitting here in the, at the dining…
Fourth Morning, San Diego
This is how I want to live – exactly like this. Is that the best way to say it? Perhaps, this is what feels like the perfect life, as it is experienced in the moment – moment after moment. These last two days, pieces, parts, and times of the days. It’s all only one man’s…
Third Morning, San Diego
I can always tell when it’s 6:30 in the morning in Ocean Beach, California. That is when the first airplane passes overhead. Like, real close overhead. San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport is only a mile or so away, as the seagull flies, and is unique as an airport in that it offers only one runway. Just…
Second Morning, San Diego
I keep jumping up from the curvy cushioned chair in which I am sitting and reading and drinking coffee in hope of seeing the flocks of loudly chattering wild parrots which fly and roost and chatter in this up-the-hill neighborhood of Ocean Beach in San Diego, California. But I never do – see them –…
First Morning, San Diego
I’m writing with a pen lifted from the Mark Spencer Hotel in downtown Portland. I’m writing on an oblong table in a large breezeway room at the in-laws in San Diego – out in the County, some 13 miles from the Pacific Ocean and the edge of the continent. I’m writing this down in a…
A Week of Stories
I spent the last week with my wife Susan in San Diego – specifically two days with her parents out in the County, and five glorious days in San Diego’s Ocean Beach. Our first morning, at Ann and Bill’s, awake before all others, I performed my usual morning routines and rituals which end with writing…
Strolling for Joy
I walked out the back door this morning, right around 7:00, with the daily intentions to empty the coffee filter, check on our tiny vegetable beds, and open and walk through the garage studio. Pretty much every morning, after meditation and coffee and reading in the recliner, I do these things. Like today. We have…
Inspired to Keep On
From The Morning Pages: Late to the party this morning, got hung up reading a bunch of my old Blog posts. I, for the most part, dig them, there is a voice – my voice – and there is both a gentleness and a fairly clear sense of loathing and doom. Again, the idea…
The Value of Me
I have a painting – this one, oil, which is now framed and under glass – and I painted it with a palette knife on a piece of 15 x 11 watercolor paper. The painting slightly influenced, in my mind while I was making it, by the work of Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell, primarily…
Saucer, Krasner, and Mrs. Maisel
I have one distinct memory of the 1950’s. I was walking on my street – High Street in Wareham, Massachusetts – knocking on doors of houses and encouraging anyone who answered my knock to vote for Dwight Eisenhower for re-election to the Presidency. This would have made it sometime in the fall of 1955, and…
New People
I was out on a walk late yesterday afternoon and twice along the way I smelled honeysuckle. A surprise and a gift – twice. Later, before nine, I was in the basement involved with an eighteen-minute timed-writing session. Channeling words and sentences. One sentence formed in the expression of hope I begin a new oil…
On the Orleans Rotary
“Some day I’ll fall back into the pattern of the world. I’ll still be free On the Orleans rotary.” From “Some Day”, ‘The Automatic Poems’ That’s poem number one in the Cape Cod “Summer Daze, Deserted Winter” section of my newest book of poetry, the first stanza. It’s a hopeful poem, I think, and…
Atomic Monkey
I’d like to talk about my poem “Atomic Monkey”, and in doing so, talk about my whole life. When I got sober I use to go to these meetings where people trying to get alcohol and drugs out of their lives would gather and talk about how that was going. Sometimes a whole group of…
Walking in the Rain
I was the victim of a scam this week. I say “I”, but my wife Susan played a role in the victimization as well. Also a victim. This afternoon I texted my friend Gavin in Oakland and asked if he had any time to talk. That I needed to talk. He got back to me…
Tuesday
This is Tuesday and I have decided to fast today. It’s 1:25 in the afternoon and so good so far. I am also home alone today, always a treat. It’s 1:27 in the afternoon and I’m all alone here. I was aware of both facts last night, – fasting and alone-ness – meaning I knew…
Lesson
After I was about three and a half months sober I’d saved enough money to haul my sorry self off my sister’s couch and move into an apartment of my own – actually less than half a mile away, also on a third floor, above the family who owned the house and lived on the…
We Give, We Get
For many years I made an annual donation to The Jimmy Fund – the Massachusetts Children’s Cancer research and treatment fund. The Boston Red Sox have been affiliated with The Jimmy Fund for about forever, and one year my donation was large enough that I was afforded a lunch in the Fenway Park press room…
Hey Bro
I woke up Wednesday morning, and after sitting on a cushion and drinking coffee discovered someone had become my third patron on my new Patreon creator’s site. It was my friend Butch, all the way over in Florida. Hey Bro. I’d been thinking for a few days that I’d only managed two patrons on this…
The Me of Me
Periodically, I’d say maybe three or four times a week – more if I’m “on” – I sit at this keyboard and do “timed writings”, kind of stream-of conscious, automatic writing in which I try to begin with a particular thought and then dish on that from there, the timer on the phone set for…
Shower the People You Love
I am about to ask you to become a Patron of mine. A someone who supports my devotion to and efforts at creativity – in my particular case as a writer and an artist. And as an artist working in both oils and acrylic, drawing with pencil and charcoal. Working at keyboards and coffee shop…
Two Cans of Ballantine Ale
I remember it being sometime before 11:30 when I let myself into my sister’s apartment – like 11:20. A Friday night. I could not tell you where I’d been the last seven hours or so, other than flashes of being in my car driving on Route 1, I think through Saugus and maybe as far…
Thirty True Fans
Well, that didn’t last long. I’ve toyed with the title of this post, asked myself “What’s the goal?”, and decided I’d leave it here -“Thirty True Fans” – where it’s been a while, a title only, because in fact that is the goal. The not lasting long was my re-entry into the world of nine…
Coming Soon
….to a Monitor directly in front of you. Ah, maybe a mobile device. Some screen. Lots and lots and lots of goodies from me. Stuff – mostly new stuff, a bit of old stuff, recycling maybe. I have much to say and a burst of plans – you’ll see why – and all…
Gifts
It is crystal clear. I do need to buy the Mary Oliver book (“Upstream”) and then pick it up and read it regularly. The way people early in recovery read “The Big Book” and “The 12 and 12”. I feel entirely filled with inspiration and awe and a bit of regret and the hope for…
Thin Slicing
Here, now, is a slice or two of my mind. Back on October 17th of last year I published a post called “Risks and Other Things” in which I talked about a suggestion I had read – to begin each day by coming up with and writing down 10 Ideas. Every day. It would not…
In Between the Transport, There’s Kindness
I had a friend, a while back, named Linda. She was a lesbian on whom I had a wicked crush, and while she chuckled often at that – as in dream on – we hung out together every week. This must have been back in the mid-nineties. We talked about all kinds of things, and…
Quickly
It has been a while since I posted on Couch Surfing at 70, too long, and I plan to have a lengthy update early next week on three of the current “adventures” in my life – trying to find a job; trying to sell my car; trying to read 50 books in one year. All…
My Last Mistake
I made my last mistake yesterday. At the tail end of a job interview, an actual in person person-to-person gathering to which I was invited as a result of an emailed application, resume, cover letter — and please believe here that before the interview began I grabbed the empty air space to thank the woman…
On the Cusp
I am filled with questions, here, on the cusp of my 70th birthday. A day before the first day of my eighth decade on the planet. Still up here, above ground. Still upright, no white chalk outline around my body. Not yet. And I wonder – will I get another decade? Out on a walk…
Lost and Found
Sometimes I feel lost. Not too often. But, yeah, I do sometimes. It may be connected with self-talk – all those things that I say to myself, generally about myself, through the day, days into weeks, at this point so many weeks. Want to know how many? This many – 3639. Multiply that by seven…
Back on the Chain Gang
I recently pulled my resume from the ‘Do Not Disturb’ pile where it has been collecting dust for some eight years or so. Reading through it I see how it must have been a nightmare for any perspective employer who had received it in the mail – good old snail mail – or later on…
Number 9, Number 9
There’s a story here, one of mine, if you’ll hang with me for a moment or two. I’ve talked off and one about the “10 Ideas”, written first thing every morning because, well, ya can, and one of those ideas for me being to read 50 books within a year. I described in some detail…
Here’s a Day – Irvine
Repetition breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds, what? – Comfort? In other words, is there comfort in a butt-and-back-worn seat on a Greyhound Bus? Like the one I’d taken from Boston to San Fran. Just tell the story. Now a month on my friend Bob’s couch, and having struck out in my lofty job search for…
The Other 364
We have flannel sheets, Susan and I, on the bed. Soft chocolate brown. I think they cost twenty-five or thirty bucks a year ago, maybe it was two. But, here’s the thing. I crawl into bed at night, it’s cold, I’m always cold now that I lost all this weight, and the sheets are already…
My Taurus
I walked onto the lot of Bonnell Ford in Winchester, Massachusetts one warm afternoon in May of 2003. I was with a woman named Mary, with whom I was living at the time up in Lowell in her house. My 1996 fire-engine-red Ford Taurus was near death. I needed another car, and I was clear…
I Was Thinking
Timed writing #2. Wednesday One – Oh, was gonna, well, enough of that. The suggestion read in a book to begin each day taking a few minutes to come up with and write down ten (10) ideas – every day – and if that felt to difficult, come up with 20. Sticking to the 10,…
Ranting About Self Talk
See, I am overdue for a weekly Blog post and have been focused on projects other than the Blog (Zine, DeLoreal Beach Mysteries, upcoming art show and sale) and yesterday when I asked myself what was next for the Blog I answered “I don’t know.” Then, in the third piece of timed writing for the…
When 10 Becomes 50
I try to picture myself at, say, age 11, imagine myself curled up on a soft chair in the living room, or on my bed, head propped up by pillows, reading a book. But I can’t see it. I can’t see that image through high school either, at my family’s home, at Jay’s or Water’s…
I Sit, and I Am
Please sit down for these three stories. I bought this pink recliner when I first moved to Portland, Oregon in January of 2009. I bought it directly off Craigslist for $40, and that price included a father and son delivering it into the living room of my apartment. It stayed with me there, then moved…
Risks and Other Stuff
I recently read that if you don’t have enough failures in your life it means you haven’t tried enough things. Let me phrase this from a personal viewpoint. If I can’t look back and see a long list of failures – and included among them at least one or two that could be labeled ‘spectacular’…
No, Not Like Spenser
I woke up and got up at 4:42 this morning, soon after began my morning “rituals” of sitting in meditation, bowing, drinking coffee while reading books that help me out, then heading to the basement and writing my three Morning Pages. The alarm in our bedroom has been set for 5:30 mornings for years, which…
My Last Post
I truly thought my last post – ‘Taking Help Part Three’ – would inspire and generate lots and lots of comments. It feels important, like I got to channel some big stuff. Have you read it? Do you have thoughts about its ideas?
Taking Help – Part Three
It was nearly 35 years ago when a kind, goofy, full-of-life man named Dick Morrison gave me this suggestion — “Your Higher Power didn’t bring you this far to suffer.” His comment was in reply to one of an endless supply of moans and complaints, cries against the unfairness of life, I was regularly wailing…
Taking Help – Part Two
Cash Only In his book “On Writing Fiction” author John Gardner reminds us that reading fiction involves “a suspension of disbelief.” Not a usual collection of words but easy to understand – if you truly want to enjoy this story about a young wizard and his friends you need to believe, at least here and…
Taking Help – Part One
Will It Go Round In Circles I wonder when my story began? In a delivery room in St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, Massachusetts sometime early the morning of January 19, 1949? A Wednesday. That’s the easiest answer. Or was it the winter-turning-into-fall of 1969 when my outlook on life – perhaps stance is a…