Stray Thoughts While Drinking Tea on the Back Deck

I must create to respond to the desecration of human beings around me.

Social media desecrates human beings and monetizes our interactions. Why are decent people still engaged with this?

What can you say about a writing non profit that profits by exploiting writers? I met one.

Patience has made me weary.

There really is no more hope for rapprochement with several people who formerly played unique and powerful roles in my life. At least it’s not possible on my end. A wise new friend with boat-making skills reminded me of that recently. That letting go is so torturous, but so necessary.

Nevertheless, I will always listen to someone from the past. I will respond unless the approach is hateful. These still come my way from time to time.

I love watching bumblebees. One is bounding around me as I write this. She wants the tea.

Today is Mother’s Day and I am lucky to have the mother I have. I hate the hell I’ve put her through the past two years. She, above all, is who I seek to honor through my future work and habits.

And what will that future work be? I can’t get a job, although I am inventing ones.

Why do some important people disappear from our lives without a trace? Have I done that to someone? It recently happened to a poet I met and I can’t fathom why.

A deer has come into the yard. Or at least I want a deer to come into the yard. I have an apple ready. We’ll break apple together.

Amity is a great word and so rarely used in writing or conversation.

E.L. Doctrow wrote: “There is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.” I used to scoff at statements like this. I don’t anymore.

I am rereading Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song for the fourth time. This is the thousand-page book I read in 1979 in high school that made me want to become a writer. It still does.

A noted Oregon playwright is writing a musical about Vortex I. The playwright sought me out for counsel on the project. I think this far out idea is going to fly. No, there won’t be any nudity. Sad.