I sometimes revisit old essays and think, ‘What a load of shit.’
But this piece still retains the essence of what I felt a year ago, almost to the day.
The Loneliness in December.
Drop a mail if you want to share a Christmas Tune, or just say, ‘Yeah Dude, I’m still here!’
I might not answer right away, but at least your words are not going into the void.
Blessed Eve and merry morrow!… Read the rest
There was no orchestrated mayhem.
No drums, bonfires, or initiation rituals.
I joined a support group for males during a low point in my life.
And the experience was great.
Instead of getting my token for the ancestral sweat lodge, I got a cup of coffee.
The guys told their stories.
Some became highly emotional, and the well-established dam walls broke.
But by the third and fourth meetings, it all began to fizzle.
The altruistic … Read the rest
“Jesus Dude!”
The guy in red sidestepped to the left.
But The Crusader hadn’t lunged at him; he fell to the right, into the industrial-strength foliage growing on the curb. His makeshift cross suffered no damage. I should have borrowed that artifact to cleanse myself from the residual demons lurking around the office area.
A few meters away, I stopped and checked my bag one more time, ensuring my train card was in there, along … Read the rest
I have always been fascinated by non-Latin writing systems. Chinese characters, Japanese kanji, Arabic calligraphy, and Korean hangul feel dense and meaningful. Each symbol looks like a small object, not a thin line in a sequence.
To me, Western letters feel more separated and linear, like sticks placed side by side.
I wanted to see what would happen if those familiar letters were pushed together until they became something more symbolic.
That idea became my … Read the rest
I graduated from university with majors in English and psychology.
This dude was geared to infuse the mundane thoughts and creative exploits of everyone “out there” with his newfound armamentarium of excellence.
But first, before I could take my brilliant insights and skills into the world, I had to pay the piper: conscription.
That scary shit that had been looming over me for years finally pulled me into its bowels.
One thing I can say … Read the rest
Corporal Rockjaw was unusually amicable that day.
He told us that if anyone thought the mess hall food was shit, they should write their complaint on a list, add their force number and ID, and the matter would be escalated through proper channels.
Complaints were allowed, but the cost of speaking made the right of free speech worthless.
You can guess how many complaints surfaced that week.
Yeah, no-brainer there: Zero.
No one wrote their … Read the rest
Some questions cut back.
They keep returning, century after century, generation to generation.
They will stalk us as long as we are human and still failing at being it.
Even when the machines rule, the dead walk, the stars swallow us, or the bombs fall again.
Someone will still wake at 3 a.m. choking on them.
For a moment the world holds its breath, as if waiting to see whether the question will finish what … Read the rest
I was in a crowd. We were being herded like sheep. Maybe not. Maybe sheep got better treatment.
I remember military intake with a clarity I wish I had for the rest of my life.
Funny how the moments that hit the hardest become the ones we remember.
A crowd of strangers pushed through narrow checkpoints, clutching bags, uniforms, forms, uncertainty. We weren’t moving with purpose. We were being moved. I had no idea where … Read the rest
Only the Alan Parsons could make a record as innovative, as exciting, as Ammonia Avenue!
That’s a bold statement, but hey, it was the mid 80s!
The clip is from a radio commercial. Some of the marketing cliches echo that golden age of copywriting when people could say almost everything, as long as they injected the generalizations with confidence. While confidence carried the day, not all eighties copy was eloquent. Plenty was cheesy, rushed, … Read the rest
Leadership courses and seminars are absurd inventions of the corporate age. Seriously, for crying out loud, what exactly were these people doing before they signed up for a three-day “transformation” in a hotel ballroom? The brutal truth is that there is no such thing as exclusive “leadership material.” The qualities that supposedly make someone a great leader, clarity of thought, decisiveness, empathy, resilience, communication, are equally valuable whether you’re running a company, raising kids, fixing … Read the rest
