“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”– Dorothea Lange “You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”– Joan Miro When I was 9 or 10,…
Hey There
Hey now. It’s been a while. Almost a year, in fact. Where the heck have I been? What have I been doing? Not writing creatively, that’s apparent. Let’s see…. The shortest answer is the most boring one: I’ve been working a lot more, focusing on generating as much income for myself as possible while it’s…
Escape From Facebook
It didn’t happen overnight. The thought had been fermenting in my mind for a long time. Seeds were planted during heated political arguments I’ve had with friends of mine over the past 10 years. Arguments that got out of control and became personal. I lost a good friend to one of them. We’re still connected…
20 Years Later
Today is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. The sky is as blue as it was that morning, the sun is shining as brightly, and there’s a nice breeze passing by that portends the arrival of fall. I was 33 years old on 9/11. Now I’m 53. 33 feels like a lifetime ago. 9/11 feels like…
Surviving COVID
No, I don’t have COVID. To my knowledge, I’ve never had it, although there’s a part of me that wonders if that month-long “cold” that knocked me on my ass and gave me conjunctivitis at the end of 2019 was really COVID. I’ll never know. At this point, I’m one of the fortunate people who…
Notorious RBG and The American Politburo
When I studied Marxism and socialism as a Poli Sci major in college, I came to admire some of the ideals of those philosophies, as unattainable as they seemed: elimination of economic inequality, feeding everyone, trading in some individualism for the collective benefit of the greater good. You know, like Spock said to Kirk in…
Love in the Time of Covid, The Sequel
It’s about time I get to writing about this. The Big Meeting. The Close Encounter. The COVID Interlude. How did it go? Was there a Love Connection? “Will there be a second date?” as MAGA-ass Chuck Woolery would ask before going to commercial and coming back in Two and Two? Read on. So…. let’s start…
Love in the Time of Covid
“Love, exciting and neeewwwww . . . Come aboard, we’re expecting yooouuuu! Love, life’s sweetest reward . . . Let it flow, it floats back to yooouuu!” Ahhh, love. We all love love, don’t we? Gotta have it. Can’t live without it. Love really is life’s sweetest reward. If modern dating apps are any guide,…
A Plague On All Our Houses
ROMEOCourage, man; the hurt cannot be much. MERCUTIONo, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as achurch-door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve: ask forme to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. Iam peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o’ both your houses! ‘Zounds, a dog, a rat, a…
Man or Mouse
Are you a Man? Or are you a Mouse? The year is 1986. I’m a senior in high school. At one point during this seminal year of my life, one of my friends — can’t remember who — caught the gambling bug and came up with the idea of having a poker night at his…