Dermatology visit. Yes, a poem about body dots! This up-close-and-personal (too personal?!) account is approximately midway through a poem about my first dermatologist appointment. He touches a mole on my neck then dips darting eyes to my chest, to hairy, pigmented spots and rough, pinkish patches. Seborrheic keratosis. Solar lentigo. Normal. No cause for concern. These middle years ...
Midlife Reality Check
"Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it is against the wrong wall." ~ Joseph Campbell This is an image called "Tele Time" that is included in 40x41: Midlife Crisis Postponed. It's one of a series of telemark skiing collages I've created over the last few years. It's a mobile (originating photograph and doodle were created via mobile phone and tablet) mashup (digital ...
Pause
It's still Saturday—slow, slothful, slightly soulful—Saturday morning. For another hour. I awoke early and discovered the weather to be incompatible with plans. I went back to sleep and reawoke late. Really late. Then lazy breakfast with bride and nephews and nephews' companions. Revised plans. Excursion for them; rainy day water coloring and poetry editing for me. Calm. Mostly quiet except for ...
Courage to Live the Dream
Do you have the courage to live the dream? Your dream? Or is it okay with you to live crisis-to-crisis, to muddle through your one brief existence reacting to the ups and downs as you find them? Never Truly Lived You've probably heard about elderly people who look back from the final stretch and regret the risks that they did not more often that the risks that they did take. Regret the dreams ...
Creativity on Tap
The creativity spigot runs cold. It runs hot. And sometimes — the worst of times — it runs not. Better to run cold than not at all, but best when fluctuating between a hot gush and a tepid trickle. Floods of inspiration punctuated with marathons of perspiration. Starts. Finishes. Creativity Caveat Enough with the how of creativity and on to why... Why court the muse? Why seduce and sing and ...
Hazmat
What?!?! Have I totally lost the plot, you're thinking, right? One might well wonder lately if we've all lost the plot. Tempestuous times. Wacky ways; weird days. Too much vitriolic verbosity. Too little tolerance. Too little curiosity... Beware the tox- ic rumor mill, which sits unground, on dusty sill. The lines above come from a reflection on toxicity and tolerance and combinatorial ...