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The Union Waltz

After work we would be headed to Smitty’s Bar, where the twangy music would kick up, and I’d try to find the courage to dance in public.

I Still Don’t Feel Free

I’m sick of being defined by the prison experience and long to be a normal human being with a past that doesn’t need to be discussed.

Rain Shadows

When you have been through something terrible, and you know deep down the outcome could have been otherwise, you develop a strange gratitude for everyday life. The smallest acts of generosity can make you cry.

The Point

Home is 1.1 miles away, about a five-minute bike ride. I can feel the distance in my gut, like a rubber band with one end attached to my apartment and the other to my lower intestine.

Something I Might Say

I read all the literature hospice brought: Give the gift of comfort and calm. Give them support, permission. Give them more than they gave you.

The Loss

Some treat shiva purely as a party. Some have a mournful air. Some look deeply into your eyes, and you can see that they have suffered, too. This is the higher purpose of suffering: to inspire deep-eyed compassion. It’s one of those truisms that is actually true.

Sonny Boy Williamson

In a clearing in the woods alongside a country lane outside the town of Tutwiler in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, stands Sonny Boy Williamson’s granite grave marker. As we approach, we notice more of the glints beneath us, and notice the same silver glints piled atop the old monument.

Play, Hands

Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.

Fire All Around

Even though we all breathed the smoke from the destruction of the town of Paradise in 2018 — breathed in their burning cars, homes, animals, and bodies — it was still happening “over there” to “other people.”

Letter From A Cabin

On A Fifty-Mile-Long Dirt Road In Montana’s Centennial Valley, Written To My Sister In Vermont, August 2016, Never Sent

I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.