Discovering My Tiger Face

Written August 10th, 2023 Sitting here at sixty-two years old, turning page after page of my final few chapters, it’s odd that I feel no sense of nostalgia when looking back over the past forty plus years. I can honestly say that I feel no love for the “glory...

What Is the Color of Defiance?

Written January 20th, 2006 I find it hard to believe this was written seventeen years ago, because I clearly recall watching the commercial for the first time and feel the ground give way beneath my feet. It was an immediate association between neurons (seemingly) occupying different worlds inside my...

The Moth and a Nearly Lost Moment

Written April 18th, 2023 So, check this one out. A little earlier in the evening I wrapped up writing in my journal, specifically working on an essay concerning a scene from the movie “Avatar” that I wrote in 2010, but never quite finished to my satisfaction. It has literally...

The Middle Zone – Thoughts on “The Goldfinch”

Started October 14th, 2015. Finished May 28th 2023 “I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where the two very...

Opening Up to Wonder

Written January 2nd, 2010 Well, it happened again, when a perfectly normal day suddenly dropped a crater beneath my feet that I could not avoid. What exactly does that mean, you may ask? Well, first you would need to understand that whenever an idea grabs my full attention, whether...

Birdman, or The Virtue of Ignorance

Written November 11th, 2014, “After Thought” written March 2023 As fate so often plays out, a chain of completely random choices concerning what movie to see turned into an absolute feast for my mind. A different movie was actually planned; a typical Hollywood action/drama, but obstacles of timing and...

So the Girl Can Love Herself

I hope Emma will forgive the intrusion, but this shot from “Bird Man” perfectly captures the “beautifully broken” protagonist mentioned below by Jane’s Addiction. Written December 22nd, 2022 My mind is driven by associations, and in that regard I feel extraordinarily lucky to have a deep reservoir of memories....

A Four Billion Mile Selfie

Written February 18th, 2018 From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being...

The Beauty of an Ephemeral Thing

Originally written March 8th, 2006, expanded January 2023 “The Japanese have a word, AWARE, for the feelings that arise from the beauty of an ephemeral thing.” Those words were featured in an article that I came across recently while paging through a National Geographic magazine. There it paraded a...

Notes Born of the Earth

Written (Mostly) May 16th, 2009 I have never considered Willie Nelson among the great guitar players of the world. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t considered him much at all, and certainly not among my pantheon of Guitar God’s. From my view of things, he was just another...