: lower black pain.

I find no state of being quite as deeply insulting as insomnia. Because it isn’t just about being awake; it’s about the knowing the state I’ll be in the following day. I know exactly what 3PM is going to look like when I’m up at 3AM, which is immediately stressful, bringing a tide of adrenaline that self-perpetuates the situation. Oh sure, I might drag myself into work, but by 11:30 I’ll be strugg...

Somewhere in Peru, an aged schoolbus with no working windows (all permanently open or closed) roughly winds its way along a jungle road, picking up villagers on their way to or from the market. Loaded with baggage and animals and children and laughter, it is a loud, bumpy, and uncomfortable ride, yet so much a part of the community that every passenger experiences a warm familiarity. So last week,...

I’ve been stationed in many a cubicle in my work life: beige, grey, light green (I think that was my favorite), each a definitive non-statement of industrial design, constructed from canvas and oddly non-magnetic steel, semi-surrounding us like parentheses. It’s the evolution of sitting at one’s desk in a classroom. The desk was never really yours, you just sat there. But often one found the names...

My junior high daughter has started doing math for fun, so I guess that summer is coming to a close. Not quite the swallows coming home to Capistrano, but it does indicate that it’s probably time to wrap it up and get ready for the rest of the year. Summer has been what it always is in the core of the northern hemisphere; dependably warm and lush, tree-wise. It’s strange to think that it’s snowing...

languid : exhibiting a natural disinclination to physical exertion; leisurely; unhurried Under a giant beach umbrella in a sturdy beach chairsits a woman wearing a wide brimmed hat and sunglasseswho sips something very coldthrough a colorful strawfrom a very tall glasswhich she sets downlightlyon the little white table beside herso that she may continue to read a book, languidly . I’ve read booksI...

It was after church, right after church, so I didn't even get to take my tie off. The basement was finished and furnished, but it was still a basement, without windows, and my suit felt hot; polyester not breathing, and I was eleven, and church had already been 3 hours long, and then we all said we'd come to Miss McClaine's house after to see her slide show. She'd laid out nuts and dried apricots...

My wife is from California. As a little girl she saw The Wizard of Oz, where, as you might remember, the plot is driven by a tornado’s direct effect on an impossibly sturdy wooden cabin. Zoë didn’t like that much, and decided that she’d never like to visit there, that was crazy, clouds attacking people was not the kind of thing that was supposed to happen, that was really bad. I am from Kansas, an...

Drive-ins don’t have anything you go to the movies for; there’s not great sound, the picture is ok but not pristine, there’s no quiet, no comfy seats, there’s not even dark, really. But it’s amazing. You can eat whatever you want, you can lay on a blanket, the stars are up above your head.  It’s a cinematic picnic - with no grass or sunshine, not entirely about the movie, really. Sure, there’s one...

Two mimes. And they’re married. And they are on tv. Not only that, they have their OWN tv show. On a major network. In prime time. Weekly. And it’s an hour long. And it’s a hit. Hahahhahahaha… …ah. That’s real, by the way. If you can’t imagine a future where that could possibly happen, it’s probably because it has already happened. In 1977 (and 1978) Shields and Yarnell had a summer replacement se...

I have that same t-shirt. With the blueprint of the Voltron robot. That exact shirt –  from the subscription boxes I used to get. Heh. Hmn. It looks way different on that guy. A different size? He's my same height, though... you could only order it in small, medium, and large; and the small fits a little kid - and the larges are for, like, The Rock. It’s gotta be the medium. It really does look di...

Let me tell you a little story: I arrived in New York City, winter of ‘93. I needed a job. So far I’d been a tutor, office assistant, café worker, cabaret performer, security person, housecleaner, lead singer, film editor, data input guy, nanny, scriptwriter, and telephone fortune teller. None of these stuck as a career. Now I was a husband and suddenly, a New Yorker. I put on a blue suit, the nic...

For the last 41 years I have had a one second summer vacation, right at the beginning of the season. I uncontrollably smile, my whole body relaxes, and I look so forward to eight to twelve weeks of sleeping late and watching Captain Kangaroo every morning while eating cereal for both breakfast and lunch, reading books in three hour long stretches. enjoying a popsicle from the freezer after a full...

As a kid, you feel invincible. Your body is just one thing: you don’t think about your knees or your back or your eyes as separate, they’re part of a bio-spaceship you’re piloting around. The older I get the more I become a jigsaw puzzle of discrete physical pieces, each with their own set of verbs. My ears? Ring. My jaw clicks. My gut… roils. And the rubber-band physics that used to define motion...

When my college reunion was announced, I began writing a poem. I missed the physical event due to the complications of our car being filled with water, but I finished the poem anyway. That’s what this is. A while agoAn age ago I left a Universityfilled with a stomach full of hope and half a head of let's just see having traded anecdotes and studied some and kissed some folks and sung a bit and pla...

I cannot remember names. I never could. Delightfully, there was lockdown. During online meetings everyone’s name was right below their face like a caption in a Criterion film. Cheat codes. “Hello, Patricia!” I would say at School Leadership Team meetings. “How was your weekend, Rebecca?” I would nonchalantly add. Now, if I see you face to face, my background isn’t blurred, but my foreground is. I...

Have you ever had that dream where you’re back in school and it’s suddenly finals time and you haven’t finished the work? So have I! Also, I’ve had that happen to me when I was awake, more than once. The first time was in high school, when I decided to try to write a piano concerto. I did not know how to write a piano concerto. But I had MOXIE. I approached my music teacher with the idea that my s...

I would not dare to refer to myself as a professional writer; perhaps more of a storied amateur, a local craftsperson, an inspired aspirant. I’ve just begun writing things people could read, and you never learn anything at the beginning. At the beginning it all seems to be going well because you don’t know the difference. My first class in college was a Literature course where we began with Chauce...

I called my Mom to say hello, and she asked if I’d heard a certain story “on the news”. I said I hadn’t. So she told me the story. It was “the news”, so the story wasn’t really a happy one. I don’t expect news to be happy; the words “have you heard this”  or “I’ve got to tell you something” rarely lead, in my limited experience, to a happy story. “You’re listening to BBC World News. Today, kittens...

I just read an article that said getting six hours of sleep a night was as bad as not sleeping for two days straight. There was research, in a laboratory, with subjects and pencils and numbers. I’m proud when I get six hours of sleep. I’m not saying that I “get six hours sleep”, like, every night or anything. I don’t know where you even heard that, that’s incredible, what an imagination you have....

Hey. If you’ve been here for a while (thank you very very very much) you probably know that my hometown is Kansas City. Long before it was cool to wear a Chiefs or Royals cap, I rode the Yankee / Mets gauntlet of the subway proudly sporting my ancestral brands. Ok, I was a 49ers fan for a while back in the day, but everybody was, it was like science fiction - Montana and Rice? and I don’t even fol...

I used to say that I wasn’t a math guy, but I’ve learned that what I’m not is an arithmetic person. It turns out that actually enjoy mathematics. Reaching beyond arithmetic’s addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, mathematics serves as a dynamic modeling science of measurement and pattern. I didn’t actually know the two were different until I looked them up. I’m thinking about numbers...

I was washing the dishes last week when my daughter danced by. She’s growing, quickly, and every night her bones begin to stretch around suppertime. Her answer to this pain is to defiantly strut through our apartment like it’s a fashion runway, listening to music in her headphones, dancing out the lyrics to the songs, applying the healing miracle of being entirely fabulous. It’s kind of like watch...

So. Have you ever not been able to find something, a tool maybe, a stapler let’s say, and so you just finally end up getting another one, and then you end up finding the first one?  Please say yes. Great, whew, well, then this’ll be a fun story. In an effort to live bold, wild and free, I erased 9000 computer files this week. All of them were copies of copies of backups of other copies of files re...

Let’s see, I’ve covered what I’m writing, how I’m writing it…  when ? – well, I guess that’s now. Which ? (maybe that doesn’t really work here). Who ? (that’s me ? Obviously. Yeah.) So, why am I writing a ballet? That is an excellent question. I don’t remember. I was originally inspired by the story of a girl I met who, in the spirit of the film “Footloose” went against her family’s wishes to purs...

My third favorite piece of kitchen equipment is the springform pan, a metal band with a cinching latch and a perfectly round disc. It’s a puzzle that you make cakes in; alone, the pieces are somewhat philosophical metal circles, but together they hold hot batter . It’s my favorite cake pan for sure, because the shape of that cake is the shape of the puzzle, not the pieces. It somehow does not seem...