“Be an ant,” he says. “Don’t look at the whole project at once and try to do it,” says my stone-steady, clear-eyed, logical-thinking husband. “Be an ant. Do what’s in front of you. Do this one thing, take this one step, then do the next one.” I’ve seen the ant approach in action over and over. This man has renovated dozens of old houses by being an ant. He has a vision, then he “ants” them, piece by piece, bit by bit, until they’re finished. Things that once resided only in his imagination become real. … Continue reading Be a Woman Bug by Susan McCulley→
You Held My Hand And Walked Me Out Of The Water Sometimes I look at the photos of my parents before they were sick to try and find clues of the diseases to come. There’s one of them courtside at a Providence Friars basketball game, three days after Valentine’s Day. It’s a Thursday, a school night, timestamped 9:25 p.m. Mom must have skipped Survivor. It’s almost a year to the day before Dad’s official diagnosis. They look bold and bright. They belong together, they’re soulmates. And I cry. Mom chose “Grace” as her … Continue reading Room For Grace by Daniel Kenner→
At some point—I’m not sure when—I came to accept that there are quite a few things that I can’t control. It was not a conscious decision, no epiphany, no wrestling with big ideas. It’s not really ceding control—it’s accepting what has become increasingly obvious, in truth probably somewhere between realizing and accepting. The stock market, terrorism, famine, middle of the night trips to the bathroom, gray hair, the clutter that my wife and kids leave on the kitchen counter where I’m trying to cook, the hair that our dogs shed on the furniture, the weather. … Continue reading Quetico by Larry Glass→
I am a compulsive researcher. If it were not such a useful compulsion, I would need a twelve-step program to break the habit. I can get hooked on almost any research project, although I tend to obsessively research things that interest me like history, motion pictures and the supernatural, which, like religion, has long been a topic of interest to me without my necessarily believing in the suspension of the laws of nature. I am especially motivated to spend hours poring over records if I feel an emotional connection with a subject, for example, a … Continue reading A Circular Argument by Miles Fowler→
One summer evening, long after dusk, I was relaxing on a porch in a comfy chair next to a novelist I’d just met when she softly announced, “The stars in the sky look like an ocean. But I’m high, so maybe that’s just a stoner-thought.” I flicked my eyes up and verified that the cloudless, night sky did indeed resemble a boundless ocean, then I assured her, “No, no. It does look like an ocean.” I understood her concern because stoner-thoughts—while they may appear initially as profound, inspired ideas—often collapse under scrutiny. That said, I … Continue reading Why Do I Have Happy Memories→
Autumn 2003 Beautiful, downtown Kents Store, Virginia boasts two businesses, a store with snacks and sodas where hunters register the deer they’ve just shot, and a funeral home (not for the deer). Across the road is a post office, a fire hall, a Masonic Temple constructed like a brick ranch house, a brick church and a cemetery. About a mile from the store, we live on 3.2 acres where our house sits 300 feet back from the road behind an expanse of oak, hickory, beech and loblolly pine. Behind us for an equal distance is … Continue reading The Kent Store Journals, Writing Place and Time by Roselyn Elliott→
Choosing between life in a library or a museum—either choice seems disloyal to the other. As a poet I revel in language. I splash in sacred waters, words swirl around me like schools of fish in streams of inspiration. Well sometimes not. Some days I sit on the bank and wait for a nibble, slapping mosquitoes away. But I have a mute twin who finds refuge in silence, wordless descriptions, emotional constructs revealed in color contrasts, brush marks. A spiritual response to the visual, the intimate sheen of light on stone carved centuries ago, the … Continue reading Library or Museum by Judy Longley→
Things that get in the way, viz., from Online Etymology Dictionary: 1530s, from Latin obstructionem (nominative obstructio) “an obstruction, barrier, a building up,” noun of action from past participle stem of obstruere “build up, block, block up, build against, stop, bar, hinder,” from ob “in front of, in the way of” (see ob-) + struere “to pile, build” (from PIE *streu-, extended form of root *stere- “to spread”). I’ve been in an odd sort of writing funk–not a writer’s block in the classic sense, because I am writing—both prose and poetry. Drafting, anyway. I feel … Continue reading Obstructions by Ann E. Michael→
The day before Halloween 1967, I came home from school, turned on the television, and discovered the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows. All I saw was the episode’s final minute: A beautiful blonde descends a staircase and stops in front of a portrait. She loosens her scarf to reveal two puncture wounds on the side of her neck. It seems that the glowering man in the picture is probably the vampire that bit her. Cut to commercials, followed by the closing credits, which are accompanied by the haunting theme, composed by Robert Cobert and performed … Continue reading Shadows in the Afternoon by Miles Fowler→
I began making photos, suddenly and unexpectedly, in 2005, when a dear friend was diagnosed with cancer. Making photos help me to fill temporal-spatial, psycho-social holes and, on rare good days, to enjoy the flow. Other than that, as Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus, “Some things can not be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” Now, my cRaZy quilt background is unrelated to my photography. I earned graduate degrees in both business administration and philosophy and consulted/taught higher education for 30 years at two community colleges and … Continue reading Photographs by James Ray Paradiso→
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