Category: life
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love America
Film buffs will know I pulled my title from Dr. Strangelove or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The film is a comedy of errors in which the entire world is summed up in a cowboy who literally cackles and cheers as he rides a nuclear explosive from the heavens down…
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In Which I Nearly Died
For six months of 2015, my wife and I wondered if I was going to die. And then during a few months in 2016, we wondered some more. Here’s the story in which I nearly died: It started with a vasovagal episode in early summer. In case you’ve never encountered a vasovagal episode, here’s what…
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Seven Foods that Saved My Life
Tara and I have pulled one another along in the boldness of various faiths — of the inconveniences, rightly considered — that force us to consider ourselves aright and help me, for one, stand as tall as a man can stand and no taller. Several years ago she asked if we could spend a month eating…
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Need a Break ? When, why, and how to take one.
I don’t know about you but I have a hard time admitting I need a break, particularly as an artist, maker, writer, producer, curmfurdler, and space pirate. I push myself too hard too often refusing to admit that I need a break and then either my body breaks or the environment forces me to take…
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The Greatest Marriage Advice Tara and I Have Received
Tara and I really have a sweet marriage because of the greatest marriage advice we’ve received. We really do. There’s a tenderness there, a light-heartedness, that has taken work to build. Is it perfect? No. At the time of writing the first draft of this, last night I snapped at her out of my exhaustion and…
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Yoke of the Mother — from 58 poems written at 29
A Queen is a King who carries the weight Of the world within her. Enwombing the younglings And entombing their titles, taking their passings On a pilgrimage or a parade. Powder she spreads — The ashes of embers that echo the flames Of memories marking men and their gains And lovings or leavings. The leftovers…
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Upon Finding Your Old Prison Letters and Prayers — from 58 poems written at 29
It was freezing and fire and filled with the smell Of men who made due with maybe two Pairs of britches and who probably shat One anyways in the evening. Yet over it all You sing your song of something like a hope Or a cosmic comedy, of a careful need To never neuter the…
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WORBEMUSTIES for the 2017 NEW YEAR
As often as I remember, I do this thing every new year where I mourn the worsts of the past year, celebrate the bests of the past year, and dream for the musts in the coming year — here are the worbemusties for the 2017 new year. WORSTS OF 2016 : night of sleep: the…
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Living without Social Media — 21 Letters Written
Well we’re two months into our year of living without social media and I can confidently say I don’t miss it, even with googling the news more than normal (which I’m also trying to curb as I used to abstain from reading the news, but as the desert fathers said, sometimes you have to use one vice to…
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Funeral Eulogy for My Grandpa Deno Bubba
This year I had planned on staying in NYC the whole holiday season, but my grandfather passed away very, very suddenly on Saturday morning, so we grabbed an emergency flight back to Illinois, rolled into town for the visitation on Monday night and I performed the funeral eulogy and graveside services on Tuesday. Tara recorded the…
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Letters to a Young Poet …via Email
The following letters to a young poet grew out of emails sent to a poet. He had recently sent me a three-stanza poem asking for critique. I also, by the end, quote from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet: ••• [Young Poet,] There are some really, really good lines in here and obviously the subject matter is hard…
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To Della Beyond the Veil
You yearned for your homeland. Always do. After the era passes you, you pass too. Music styles wane as moons, Norwood’s fiddle when new knew you, knew grandkids too, never me though or the little themes that we know, millennials make do. My how the strings request of me: “Play.” Can resonance reach across a…