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Most often when walking home from the Spruce Street suspension bridge I notice a hummingbird on one of the electric company wires above me to my left, canyon-side of Front Street. When I told Sarah Roshi I felt any hummingbird was there to fill me with joy, she said perhaps I was there to delight…

Twenty-five copies of my new book – “It’s Like This” – arrived in San Diego yesterday. I took a picture of one on my phone and texted it to Gavin in Oakland. He almost immediately sent back a wildly joyous response, which included the title of this post – “All the punks are crying now.”…

I don’t know if I’d call it reflecting – I’ve been strolling through these past 75 years maybe more than usual lately. Sometime with reason, sometime just because. Often back to the town I grew up in, “growing up” both beginning to learn some stuff and the pages of a calendar flipping again, and again.…

When I swung my legs off the bed and touched my feet to the floor this morning, there I was with 41 years since my last drink of alcohol and the last use of any of those drugs. Writing my Morning Pages, all kinds of stops along the way – even before April 15, 1983,…

Isn’t it kinder to just talk about yellow flowers blooming in San Diego? In “Yellow Submarine” it was a “Sea of Green.” In green San Diego (all the rain) it’s a sea of yellow. Whether I’m alone or with people, there’s still the yellow. Here in the Blog through this week I’ve been wondering out…

When I was a kid I used to fish in Mill Pond in my hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts. The little side of the pond, as Route 28 sliced one part from another. The big side of the pond, north, went on maybe miles, and I fished there a lot, catching a few bigger fish, and…

I’m thinking of going online, seeking out and scoring a large vat of Brylcreem, and starting to get serious. “I was talking when I should have been listening.” Husker Du – “What’s Going On (Inside My Head)?” The idea of listening and not speaking is tangled up with the things I noted yesterday – How…

I had an interesting conversation last night. It was with myself, and took place on the drive home from Ocean Beach to the street which divides Banker’s Hill and Hillcrest – the street where we live. Some particular things had occurred a little earlier, which got me talking with me, a more spacious than these…

It’s like offering a tour of Jack London Square, and when a crowd gathers, laughing, and saying, “That’s the tour.”

The first drops of Friday rain sparkle through my head, left ear, vast listening, coffee-ending, having recently read, “Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise.” For the first time in nine months (living here) I can feel a stirring of air, breeze cousin, me in the lop-sided recliner, the most gentle air…

There’s a story behind The Righteous Brothers song “Little Latin Lupe Lu”. Let’s just take a peak – Little Latin Lupe Lu (“Lupe”) was written by 19-year-old Bill Medley when he and Bobby Hatfield were in a five-piece band called The Paramours. It’s about a girl he dated at Santa Ana High School in California…

The first line in my now published newest book is this – “You think you know how it goes.” My eleventh book – “It’s Like This” – is a collection of short stories, many among the favorites of words I’ve hung together through this life. Me with a strong sense for years and years now…

Walking under a big, big sky.

It’s Sunday night, 7:43 PST, and this is a jump on the Monday post. The one you’re reading when and where it belongs – Monday. I’m looking at the open windows at the top of the monitor screen. Left to right: Buddy Cushman – Art for Sale, fineartamerica; Buddy Cushman – Creating writings and drawings…

This is one of those mornings.

I feel like pretty much everything I can think of saying here this morning, hopefully worthy of your attention, I’ve already said recently. Age stuff and struggling artist stuff and book/writing stuff and life in this big city. A few facts are – I’m missing two of the next three days of work – a…

This morning, rather spontaneously, I changed the name of my soon-to-be-published book. My new and newest book. A “possible” book – the way Pink Floyd sings about “Your possible pasts” – which has hung out and lingered, rushed from the shadows and slipped back in, a long, long time. Yet now, with the possible help…

In about three and a half hours I’ll be off to Ocean Beach and the People’s Food Coop, where I’ll work a bit under four hours supporting a young woman and her ongoing employment there. Usually, before I leave, I buy three Cara Cara oranges for Ann. She likes them. I gave up oranges about…

“People got the idea that ultimately what mattered was the quality of what you were doing and how much importance you gave to it, regardless of how widespread it became or how many records it sold. ” Lee Ranaldo, Sonic Youth There’s much music I sort of twirled around, and missed, growing up. For instance,…

Borrowed words for the last post of this week. These from a long-ago guy named Ta-Lung Chih-hung: “The breeze brings the voice of the water close to my pillow; the moon carries the shadow of the mountain near to my couch.” Maybe it’s a poet thing.

2024 – In the yesterday library stacks, “straightening”, an art book the kind I’d never really look at speaks to me. I take it home. I’m buying a cheap, used copy a couple of hours later. Perhaps exactly like: 1971 – “Hey. There’s a new Social Welfare major. You should try it.” Salem (State College).…

I staked out my place on the outskirts of town in the Oakland Koan group last night, and woke this morning thinking remaining silent would have been better. At least, way less wordy. In a section of a Dongshan poem I have written down are the lines, “Conceal your practice, function in secret, seem for…

Monday was a day speckled with wonders and generosities, nature, sparkly clean windows, graces and graces and graces. And a breathtaking after-the-meditation sunset over the Pacific, caught sideways searching for parking, and flat-out bedazzling seen through the rear-view climbing the hill of the 8 away from the beach. Even then, the sense of having missed…

‘It’s a beautiful morning. I think I’ll go outside for a while – and just smile.’

I’m feeling rather ancient this morning. Once I could climb Mount Monadnock with ease. Once I could run nine miles Friday afternoons. Once my body worked the way bodies work in fairy tales and the movies. Once I would wake at 3am, desparate for another life. Once I had a dog and we ran through…

It’s Ann’s birthday. I have presents. Shopping for presents is pretty great. The folk singer Melanie had a line in one of her songs, “Why can’t it be Christmas the whole year through?” For me, giving it all over to what will make someone else happy is just that invitation. I remember, and it was…

I have adopted the persona of struggling artist. I think I’ve rescued it. Like how kind souls rescue dogs and cats from a shelter. I’ve shown up to point – “That one.” – and brought it home. Like Van Gogh, giving all of himself to this calling and you sell two paintings in 30 years.…

I recently watched a three-part documentary of The Jefferson Airplane on YouTube. When I was much younger I took white masking tape and tore and stuck the words “Jefferson Airplane Loves You” on the wall of my bedroom, opposite the bed. “Jefferson Airplane Loves You” was a thing back then, the mid-sixties. A slogan. An…

I went to bed last night and woke this morning entirely discombobulated. Which feels like a rather gentle way to say it. I’m closer to a place with Laura Nyro, who sang, “Last call for the poverty train.” And further, this line from a Zen Koan – “I have a way to bless this poverty.”…

I woke this day troubled. This Friday, March 2024. I was born in January 1949. It’s a long way to troubled. The 10,000th dance to get going. Every time I danced, closer. James Brown – “Get up offa that thing and dance ’til you feel better.” The Church of the Good Shepherd basement dance lessons.…

I’m feeling a bit dismayed with the ‘struggling artist’ thing, and also wildly encouraged. Both those feelings – it feels right – resting comfortably together. ‘Struggling artist’ offers such a wide array of personal views. Trust me. Struggling to paint, struggling to doodle, struggling to market and sell, struggling to easy does it, to be…

I’m drinking two large cups of rich coffee in the (yesterday) afternoon. I know I need to call a friend in Massachusetts – Steve T. I’ve arranged as art on the counter three large cara cara oranges I bought for Ann at the People’s Co-op. My first post-work book invitation is “Nine-Headed Dragon River” by…

I found myself talking about my divorce last night in the meditation meeting. In response to the leader’s story of a recent break-up. Shortly after hearing the word ‘divorce’ a morning almost three years ago, I wandered out into that day’s sunshine on Portland streets, my walking aimlessly view streaked with tears, and after a…

I spent a bunch of time the past two days revitalizing and energizing an online artist website I had joined for free in 2013. Maybe you know, maybe you don’t, I’ve begun painting again after a substantial lay-off related for the most part to my April ’21 divorce in Portland and the subsequent lack of…

Sometimes in the earlyness, sitting in the lop-sided recliner drinking coffee and reading Zen materials, I hear someone on the kitchen floor, practicing yoga, singing along to tiny headphones in the joyous voice of a little kid. It sounds like praying.

Through and within what I’ll refer to as “my practice”, I have been spending a fair amount of time these last few weeks, six or seven, thinking about my life – self and soul, inclinations and fact-of-the-matter history, hows and whens and whys of the way I am. This process, this path taken, has been…

One Sunday I said to Sarah that as I was walking back from the Spruce Street suspension bridge a hummingbird was perched on the top power line wire, chittering away, and that I had the distinct feeling it was there for my benefit – to bring joy into my day. Sarah replied, asking, how do…

I had the most marvelous revelation earlier this morning. Which I won’t bore you with. Instead, I’ll quote from The Talking Heads — “Why stay in college.? Why go to night school? Gonna be different this time.”

When I was a child, salt water splashed through my veins. I strolled and skipped through small patches of forests – we called them woods. This time of year we skated on frozen-over cranberry bogs, safety cracks in the ice some of an after-school soundtrack. I took the time, back then, to feed robins and…

I’ve had a fun thought this morning. Rather than reading a book I just received from Ebay, I will only read the brief reviews on the back cover and inside page. That will give me everything. For example, I paid four or six dollars – the most I’ll spend – for a used copy of…

What’s a Thursday like?

Falling back asleep, the recliner, before, and now here, writing a Wednesday post. I want to be like Alice, falling, falling, without a care for how tall I am. And marveling at the Red Queen’s six impossible things. Painting messes was a thought I had earlier. While sleepwalking. Cue Santo and Johnny.

Lots of Sly and The Family Stone song lyrics showing up in my spacious mind this morning – “Different strokes for different folks.”; “Everybody is a star.”; “Boop-boop-boop-boop-boop when I want to.” I am enjoying them.

Yesterday I listened to someone say, “Perform all actions as worship.” I wrote it down. Knowing me, there’s nothing connected to any religion in any of those words. It’s more the idea….the aura of each thing sacred. A bit like the author Michael Connelly’s character Harry Bosch, who’s primary stance, for his job as police…

In another part of San Diego, in another decade, I would hear roosters calling out early in the morning. “Welcome, welcome Friday”, it was like they were saying. In the world, and of the world. Their songs and the rising sun not two separate things. Imagine that. And then there was me, somewhere in Spring…

Bob Dylan has a song, “Everything is Broken.” I wrote a Blog post about him and his song something like six years ago. A different Blog. Another life. I mention it here because some things in my life have been breaking lately. This Blog and its hosting site. My closet hanging pole and shelves. Meetings…

The website hosting my Blog has been in Halloween mode this last week, tricking rather than treating. However, drinking coffee this morning, the very clear image of a cone of pistachio ice cream – all green and yummy – came clearly into my mind. So, I’d say things are looking up.

In an online group last night, talking about each shining moment of a day, someone said, “Language feels beside the point.” Either for Christmas ’22 or my birthday ’23, Ann gave me a present of a journal, titled, “There is a voice that doesn’t use words.” Here in the Blog words are a necessity. Out…

In an online group last night, talking about each shining moment of a day, someone said, “Language feels beside the point.” Either for Christmas ’22 or my birthday ’23, Ann gave me a present of a journal, titled, “There is a voice that doesn’t use words.” Here in the Blog words are a necessity. Out…

Apparently, yesterday’s post here in the Blog did not travel out into the world, out to the subscribers, out into Thursday. The machinery of this site shows it did, in every show-able place. And yet – emptiness can be quite clear. So, I will copy and paste yesterday’s post below, an amended title, fully aware…

In an online group last night, talking about each shining moment of a day, someone said, “Language feels beside the point.” Either for Christmas ’22 or my birthday ’23, Ann gave me a present of a journal, titled, “There is a voice that doesn’t use words.” Here in the Blog words are a necessity. Out…

This Wednesday before dawn, filled with chilly downpours and in-between drifting clouds revealing stars, dark San Diego, there’s something like a hush. Finger-to-the-lips shhhss. Jingle jangle morning. Um,1979 littered with weekly Al-Anon meetings in Beverly, MA – “You’ve got to take the bitter with the better.” Sign in a Vero Beach, FL clubhouse – “We…

My sister Sandy texted me a while ago, 5:18, offering a “Stay safe”, and a link to ominous weather news here in the golden state. I dozed in the lop-sided recliner, afterwards, for a bit, response to wide awake much of the night, the falling rain out in the streets for company. The music group…

Mostly I just want to drink coffee. Mostly I just want to buy books, used and cheaper the better. For the most part I’m open to every person now, though, mostly I’d prefer a rendevous in a quiet room, drinking coffee, reading cheap, used books, Ann the only other person in sight. Mostly she prefers…

I have no understanding of not returning messages and phone calls. Jackie DeShannon was quite clear about this. And The Beatles – “Step on the gas and wipe that tear away.”