Potter’s Talk
A pot maker does not mold a lump of clay into the shape he wants. If he is good at what he does, the potter asks the clay what it wants to be and makes it that. I’ve been working a particular lump of clay for nearly eighteen […]
Steel Reserve Christmas
I don’t know if it was the time of day or the geography that explains why the grocery store was so overrun with canes and walkers. The human to walker ratio at this particular Safeway was somewhere in the four to one range. The man in line before […]
Nobody Wants To Be Anywhere
“Nobody wants to be anywhere. Nobody likes anything.”Jerry Seinfeld – 23 Hours To Kill If there’s a single statement which accurately describes the spirit of our age, these words from Seinfeld do as well as any. He finishes the thought by saying, “We’re cranky, we’re irritable, and we’re […]
We’ll Make More
Plates they will shiftHouses will shakeFences will driftWe will awakeOnly to findNothing’s the same. Home is a Fire – Death Cab For Cutie It was cloudy yesterday, the first cloudy day in nearly a week. Any time there’s a stretch of several sunny days in a row, I […]
Tales From the Oregon Trail – Dead Cat Edition
Forgive me for doing this out of order. Narratives ought to start with a What or perhaps a Why, but I’m going to start by by telling you of the Where. I’m going to tell you Where I am right now, because it’s my story and I can […]
We Don’t Want People, We Want Machines
It is my forty-third birthday today, and this year I am dedicating my annual birthday story, written from the POV of a character who shares the same birthday, to the man called Buffalo Dave. Buffalo Dave, wherever you are, this story won’t make you famous, but I hope […]
The Saga Of Daredevil Dog – Tragedy in Lane Four
“Well I’m saying that the Romans, raised by wolves, they see a guy turning water into wine, what do they do. They eat him. Cause there are no saints in the animal kingdom. Only breakfast and dinner.” – Lorne Malvo, Fargo “So God created human beings in his […]
A Dying Little Boredom
I could be doing anything in the world right now. The same device logging these words is capable of receiving, through its magical roots in the digital earth, enough stimulation to occupy me for a thousand lifetimes. Even now, there are several of those stimulants beckoning me, like […]
Untangling Knots
In my teen years, I spent considerable time pondering the nature of knots. How is it, I wondered, that I can wrap up something like a string of Christmas lights in a perfect loop, stash it in a bin, and somehow, without the slightest manipulation of human […]
Kill Your Darlings
Tuesday I was soaring high. In the morning, I had a conversation with myself in the car – if you’re a writer, you have a lot of conversations with yourself; there’s really no point in feeling embarrassed about it – after all, what is writing, if not […]
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