In answer to the unasked question, I don’t know the answer. If you consent to be bullied, participate in the cruel and grotesque dance of it, what advice can compel as much as the terrifying, all-consuming tango of that?

There are many situations where we are powerless, or virtually so. In other situations, though the choice may appear very scary, there are life-affirming choices within our power to select.

Easier said than done, I suppose.

In His Humble Opinion

Sep28

Awe

Sep26

The blackness of the night, stretching over the world. For each candle, a gust of wind. Childish, this fear of the darkness, but it waits there at the end. A terror as big as God.

“I’m wondering what’s gonna be,” says the old woman, her body already 90% devoured. A few days later her eyes are only blacks, glittering like fire. Then I am at her funeral.

A soul burns in the night, feverish, shivering like a young animal first smelling the end.

A taste of death

Sep18

Silence.

A graph, slipping inexorably downward into the infinite darkness of zero.

I am talking, but there is not a ripple, nor even a breath.

It comes to all of us, but that is hardly consolation.

I Was Very Tired

Sep14

I was so tired that when I got back to Sekhnet’s I just stood there wavering.

“Are you drunk?” she asked.

“Who are you?” I said. And it was almost for real.

We go to war with the army we have

Sep13

And so we embarked, on a boat, into an atmospherically perfect morning. That I had slept less than two hours was not even on my mind as I let a comrade drink what would have been my second cup of coffee.

We go to war with the army we have, and the armaments too. We went into battle armed with a guitar, two ukuleles, a small portable keyboard and a tiny external speaker. And we put up a hell of a fight there on the beachhead. Hell of a fight, boys.