Courage 1: A ‘Star-Word’

[...] and therefore I've experienced a quiet, isolated agnosticism - free of both strife and warmth. Submerged. Imagine me as The Nautilus-- a tired Captain Nemo with less ambition yet an even deeper longing. It's a nuanced contradiction.

CPJ-5: Neo-beatitudes

I'm starting to appreciate that I'm on a bridge. I want to just jump but it's too far. I want everything to suddenly be different but all I can do is change the angle, the optics, the perspective, and appreciate that I am moving.

The Process of Polishing

Months ago I polished my silver-plated trumpet for the first time since I bought it. I didn't do "seven minutes in heaven" with a new horn at a music store in spring of 2004. Mr. Danny Barber and I arranged a parking lot rendezvous outside of "Lunkers" restaurant in Edwardsburg, MI. He played this 1974…

Putting Myself on the Hook

If I don't jam, I can't become CactusPearJams. The only way to cultivate a voice is to make it speak and sing. I want a new voice. I can't find it. I can't buy it. I must cultivate it.

“If You Can Do Anything Else”

I started writing yet another reflective essay about how I'm not writing the way I wish I were writing. I decided a free verse poem would be more compact -- thus, this column of thought.

Smashed Pear (entry fragment)

He left when he heard I was graduating. I wanted to follow him into the hallway and plead that I could drop my capstone class and hang around for another year but too many pieces of me were invested in matriculating. I wished him a good day and listened to the door shut behind him.…

Reverse Exiled: Bill the Cowboy & Beyond

It is 4 AM. This night is a metaphor. Sometime around 8 pm I felt tired and decided I would take an evening nap and awake at midnight to begin my career as a writer. What I never mention to myself is that this has happened before: I sleep until midnight and then reset the…