Essays
Naked Belief
My favorite professors were the ones who’d set me up a space heater before I arrived. Even in the early fall months, just as...
A masochist’s love letter
I love telling the story of my wisdom teeth. Anytime someone mentions a tooth extraction or dentistry mishap, I weasel my experience into the ring...
A long ugly story
Sometime in the fall of 1979 I got a phone call from a friend of my older brother. He wanted to know if I...
Coming of age in an altered world
In March of 2020 I was studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain with a group of friends, enjoying Europe in the way only a careless...
A Deadhead Cyclist pandemic
It’s often said that “every cloud has a silver lining.” This ubiquitous expression is typically rolled out in the spirit of putting a positive...
The quick and the dead
I was 16 years old when
my father asked me if I wanted to be a hero.
The year was 1999, ’round
about late April, and Dad...
Truth follows
A woman wept at the corner of Table Mesa and Harvard Lane, and all I could do was put my hand on her shoulder.
I...
Swimming with whale sharks
I’ve been riding my bike a lot, and we had tens of thousands of cycling miles between us, but I haven’t had the feeling...
The hidden path
I called a good friend heartless this year. Who have I become?
I’ve always prided myself on being a rational, reasonable person. I don’t offend...
2021 in the rear-view
The space-time continuum seemed to warp this past year, contracting and elongating: While the post-election, pre-insurrection days when election truthers seemed crazy but not...
Just a Dawdream
Bar 40 is assaulting my will to live.
I’ve spent two hours clawing away at this brief descending figure in fifths, trying to harmonize and...
Stones of remembrance
The side table drawer in my grandparent’s Arizona living room was always full of playing cards. There was the deck with Van Gogh’s self-portrait,...
