Thought-Drive

The art-house project is back on. Proudly, I have enlisted the help of someone far more artistically talented than I to help execute what I have in mind to do. The effort necessitated me to creak open the folder on a dusty flash drive and peer inside at all of my poetry. I explained the experience to a friend as if I was reading through a stranger's work. I found the fellow talented, but most disconcerting was that I couldn't remember when I wrote the things. Like an delirious grandparent, once I stared into the faces of my progeny, touched their ears, I remembered writing them, remembered their base elements, but that was all. And events recently have inspired me to try and track down one of those decedents. Unfortunately, a mentor of mine told me once that professional writers burn their juvenalia. Don't ask me how people separate one thing from another (In a conversation I had once with a poet friend, he revealed to me some wisdom that he had gleaned: a mark of a poe...

I wonder if maybe there might be something wrong with me, shooting out of the cloudy sky like a carefully constructed rocket, and smiling down on the dreary landscape that was yesterday's Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson. At least, dreary in comparison to the bright and sunny midday, warm, with only a slight chance of clouds, that was yesterday's Puerto Rico. Maybe I was just glad to be home, to see my own bed, to be able to check my email (formerly I thought being able to check my email on my phone was a good thing, but being unable to efficiently answer any of those emails, or quickly jump to the links they pointed to made it sort of like torture). All I know is that I don't know. Much like the wedding. I wonder: if one does a competent, even vaguely memorable job, is that enough to make the day special? The feelings are there, like a driven locomotive, all a body has to do is not get in the way. Whatever hiccups there were, or shortcomings I feel that I had, the bride and gr...

It seems a bit pessimistic to type this as if it will be my last correspondence with the living, web world. Yet planes do crash. And people do talk about giving their loved ones roses "while they're still alive to enjoy them." But no one talks about the dead person. Should not we also say the things we intend to say while we're still alive to say them? Or maybe that's why I write, to speak from the grave, demand, question, contemplate from an aether of sorts. or a prison much like death. Leading up to this sojourn over the happy sea, I have accomplished several of my goals. That sterling prose has been mailed (burnished, more like). I still await rejection letters from a variety of places, along with confirmation of publication from a couple others (that is, evidence of their having followed through). An alum even got back to me about querying agents. I had a burger last night under a conversation with an actor friend of mine about how exactly one, in his profes...

I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head these days. Feels like around this time last year I was asked to preside over a wedding for a friend. I took a week to think about it, then I agreed. That day quickly approaches. So recently, my mind has been wrapped up on the topic of love, what it means, what it is. Me, a man who has been constantly mystified, and confused, about the inner workings of That Thing which is not a machine, yet builds, not a tool, yet assists, and cannot see, yet seeks. What has dominated my thoughts, aside from what I should be doing, or want to be doing, or even need to be doing, is the day my father came into my room, years back, to give me the idea for a story. He had a composed tone that begged me to listen, and he outlined the idea as if he had taken great care in doing so. We didn't talk much in those days, a trend that has continued as such through the years, and that afternoon he had more words for me than he had during the entire previous mo...

March is coming. Earlier this year, or rather very, very late last year, I called myself making some resolutions. I said I was going to exercise more. I said I was going to write more; I have a deadline in early April, two in fact, one of which I didn't find out about until earlier this month. So how am I doing? I park farther from the job so I walk more at work. I take the stairs (doesn't really count, there is no elevator). The push ups and sit ups continue. Overall, it's a bit of a bust, but with warmer weather comes the avalanche of guilt. "Well, it's still cold out." Over the next six weeks, I'm going to have to finish an art project, submit about fifteen pages of sterling prose, and marry some friends in holy matrimony. The project has been mired in the sort of dust and minutia that populates the back burner, and the prose isn't sterling, and there certainly isn't fifteen pages of it (rather, I have a running tally of the absolute dumbest...

On Wednesday morning, I was served with papers at my residence by a county sheriff. I didn't immediately look for hidden cameras or a punchline. It was 7:00 am. What I did do was promptly, in my own reserved, laconic way, freak out. I showered early, ate breakfast numbly, and dressed hastily. When my hands were free, they were attached to the document. In the beginning, because the pages were filled with unwieldy, archaic language, the only thing that made sense was the dollar amount that I was being sued for. I thought about losing my grip while climbing out of the hole I was already in, and falling even deeper; I thought about those numbers plus the numbers I already owed for student loans like decreasing altitude. I felt guilty, not guilty like I had done wrong, but guilty in that the verdict had already been delivered. I was at the point when an author might write: "things had come to a pretty pass." Eventually, I got around to calling people, scrolling through my...

"I guess this is turning into a weekly thing." - Me, about my blog. Also a man, commenting clumsily about the status of his relationship with some other person. Is this getting serious, he might ask then. I have a lot of things rolling around in my head, mostly about writing. But today, tonight, as many of you may know is special. Being single, I really don't have any viability in the realm of relationships, or much of anything to celebrate on Valentine's Day (no, I'm not that guy that celebrates in mockery of the those people too "stupid" to attach themselves to someone else). But I did spend the evening with a friend. He poured himself onto the table for us to introspect on about the foibles of the romantic overture while he spent some time pouring alcohol into his body. I tried to empathize. And if not, sympathize. Together, we tried to understand. As they say, you only have to get it right once, 'it' being a good and lasting relationshi...