Musings of a Middle Aged Man

How often have you heard the bigoted castigating the immigrant for not assimilating into the US culture? If you are in America, they say, you should speak American. Never mind that American is not a language. The version of English spoken in the United States is an amalgamation of languages from around the world. Spanish is the principal language of one of its territories with others having their...

Growing up, many children are fed the manipulative line that we can achieve any aspiration we desire as long as we study hard enough, dream deep enough, and work our asses off. It is a well-intentioned lie designed to motivate the child, nevermind it also massages the parent's ego...

While exploring the streets of Bogotá in Colombia and checking out the shops following a relaxing coffee house chat with our guide, we came upon a local artist with an array of oil paintings affixed to a brick wall with masking tape for sale. I marveled at all ten of his offerings but was transfixed by the largest of the lot. It depicted a couple embracing...

The thing I adore about Momaday's writing is the poetical elegance that expresses nuanced meaning in minimal words. It is a skill honed to near perfection by many of my favorite authors, a skill I have attempted to replicate but have experienced minimal success...

Perhaps the greatest emancipator for the human species is our ability to communicate complex thoughts through language, first spoken then the massive leap forward to writing be it prehistory symbols painted or carved onto red rock walls or penned onto a blank page by a poet. Words give us the unprecedented ability to reach back into the days of your and tap into the minds of our 7th-generation gra...

When it comes to free speech, I am as close to being an anarchist as one can be. I hold the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution in high reverence and consider it the most sacred of the 27 Amendments. So, it frosts my balls when books, the epitome of free speech, are banned, especially when this tyranny is supported by elected representatives sworn to uphold the Constitution against all powers, fo...

I have many almost wings...wings that started to form but were stunted and never grew beyond nubs. They are wings like those found in butcher shops plucked bare of the feathers necessary for flight, feathers that also are breathtakingly beautiful.

There are very few places I feel completely at ease such that my environment feels like a warm blanket on a cold night and I can traipse about naked without worry of being arrested. One location is tucked safely in the four walls filled with my paintings, two windows, and a single door that bounds my office bedroom but only if the door is securely latched and there is enough soothing music to drow...

I recently watched the second of two of Ken Burn's excellent war documentaries. Years ago, I watched the Vietnam documentary with rapt attention. I've seen it twice. In that war, America had her ass handed to her culminating in an ignominious escape from a rooftop via helicopters as the North Vietnamese Army closed in pretty much concluding their 30-year war for independence, 20 of these w...

I oft wonder if people shun the desert not because of its apparent barrenness and desolation but rather because they fear the lack of distracting noise, of the silence that creates space for introspection forcing them to face the desolation within themselves. People are loathe to face the demons exposed during introspection. Was it always thus?

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://davidaolson.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/who-do-you-work-for/

When understanding is beyond the ken of our mental abilities, we fabricate fantastical stories to explain the unexplainable, a vain attempt to render the unknown knowable. It is a salve to appease the fear centers for those terrified by the unfamiliar. These sensational tales...

I have danced with spirituality most of my life occasionally falling into the trap of organized religion, a steel toothed bear trap that viciously bites into the bone any time I wiggled with spiritual questions challenging the official 'truth' of the religion...

For as long as I can remember, I have been enthralled with the outdoors be it fishing at the local pond for the tiny yet voracious Blue Gill attracted to my barbed hook tipped by bacon or camping in the backyard in a makeshift tent treated liberally with insecticide to ward off mosquitoes or a week in Wisconsin lake country in a tent compound a few blocks from a manmade lake...

I find I am more ready for my own demise than the death of someone I care about. I have lost track of the numerous cries I sent into the universe calling upon death to release me from my mortal coil...but can't remember once I've asked death to black rain down on another. However, I did embrace elements of relief mixed in with my grief when both my parents were released from the cancer ago...

In my youth, I watched more movies my dad called " Shoot 'em Ups " than most other genres because they were my father's favorites. He also loved to watch boxing matches from his comfy chair with the TV at high volume including a bass boost causing the speakers and walls to reverberate...

I am plagued by a perpetually running self-dialogue from the moment I wake in the morning until finally falling asleep late in the evening. Not even sleep is always a respite freeing me from the incessant chatter as evidenced by the erotic dream...

For the longest time, I viewed the ideal human condition as one ruled by the intellect in the form of logic. This condition was elevated to its purest forms in Mr. Spock of the Vulcan Confederation, a species with lifespans more than double that of emotion dominated humans...

I have spent the better part of my last years attempting to exfoliate tribal detritus from my mental alignment with the ultimate goal of being part of nothing so I can be part of everything. It is an undertaking significantly more difficult than it appears for tribalism is forced upon us starting from birth when we are labeled with a race, gender, and a family name along with a city, state, and na...

There is one more day to pass before the year 2023 on the Gregorian calendar, a modification to the Julian calendar introduced by Julius Caeser in changing the 1 to 46 BC. The Julian calendar was, itself, a derivation of a long line of calendars reaching back to the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian calendars of antiquity...

If one believes in an omnipotent, somewhat benevolent deity whose whims can be altered by petitions then one can make a case that everywhere we are is where we are supposed to be for the furtherance of the grand, universal plan formed by said deity before creation was kicked into play and time was instantiated...

It should come as no surprise adherents to the conservative party in the United States are reading the Hitler playbook and fighting to have books banned in schools, libraries, and even independent bookstores. It is a tactic, part and parcel, employed by dictators, autocrats, and totalitarian regimes throughout history seeking to marginalize those with whom they disagree...

Many of us humans are born free before spending our days, weeks, years, and decades building the cage in which we will reside for most of our lives, the cage that hems us in before blocking out the light from which wisdom grows. The cage traps us...

As any engaged parent of multiple children can attest, being born with a Tabula Raza, a blank slate at birth is a complete and total myth as preposterous as the mythologies disguising themselves as religions, plaguing the world claiming to be anything other than metaphors on how to conduct life in a particular environment and point in time...

There was a time, I freely admit, when I was lured in more by superficialities than substance. I was drawn to women for the proportions of their physical shape and the classical beauty of their faces where I should have been more focused on their character, a mistake costing me dearly in both physical and emotional distress...