It is another world, illness, and ever so often one needs to enter it.  Just for the contrast.  Just to remember.  I have suspicions about the origins of this cold, the one that has just about run its viral course.  But no doubts about the experience.  It saps core energies.  It drains the solar plexus.  One becomes less and, for me, remembers one is less anyway.  Getting up in the morning, standing, beginning the bathroom day...where is it, the normal life Read more [...]

It is a daily battle, part of the long war, and today I seem to be winning.  So, let us declare victory, however temporary, and rejoice in the enemy's defeat.  That no one has yet identified the enemy, well, that is no matter.What is the matter...with me, that is?  I rarely doubt that something is fundamentally amiss.  I mean, I've always been a screwup.  Don't all signs point that way?  Isn't it obvious?It would be a considerable step forward for me to see the whole Read more [...]

Oh, I suppose there are Luddites and technophobes, but having made a living writing for the computer industry over decades, these terms don't seem fair in describing me.  And fairness is important.  Because I am on trial.  Or have I already been sentenced?  Hard to say where the proceedings are, but it's not going well for the defendant.My friend Andrea recently sent out an all points bulletin concerning her mind-boggling attempts to get a home wireless network functioning.  Read more [...]

I only realized it this morning in mulling over a dream.  How wrenchingly painful it is to recall my parents' efforts at loving.  Some of their efforts actually succeeded, that is true.  But at this stage of my life, it is their failed efforts that seem so poignant, almost unbearably so.It must have been about 1962.  No, it wasn't 'about,' but exactly.  I recall the emotional milestones of my life with great accuracy, for better or for worse.  In retrospect, the summer Read more [...]

Clarum Homes, whatever are they?  Not to worry, for there are four of them rising where Marlou and I once eyeballed a single home, one that had a sort of apartment unit over its garage.  And we kept wondering, or Marlou did, what would happen if the asking price dropped substantially below $1.2 million, we dropped our retirement savings into the property, rented the apartment unit for the maximum....  Couples need such conjectures, I have learned.  With any luck, they dream more Read more [...]

Things are not quite what I had assumed in the spinach bed.  Make your bed and lie in it, I say, thinking this would really be a pleasant option on this particular day.  While faintly protesting and shaking his head in disbelief, about a month ago my brother poured bags of steer manure atop the recently dug-in cover crop...and the resulting smooth and well kept look of the garden beds...there is more to it.  Today, perhaps because the sun was out in force for the first time in weeks, Read more [...]