Here’s an entry from the Juniper Writers Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. Alma Mater to many legendary scholars and thinkers, the greatest of whom being Doctor Marcus Camby. That boy can play, has played, ball. He a baller. He a Rhodes Baller.
I’m here and I feel out of place, which is [...]
That afternoon I met her at the studio. Her hands were on her hips and she had a look that said, “You little rascal. So forgetful and careless in your varied and packed schedule. This is just like you. I bet you’re giving wrong keys all over the place.” She had the condescending smile, the [...]
I may have falsely made the reader believe that my days consisted of nothing but dropping the kids at school and daycare, then arriving at the studio with the intention of working every day. The truth is that I have a job — that the studio is a luxury of sorts, and I can access [...]
Later, I suppose I had to admit that I got a bit of joy from it, this mystery of the keys. She would never know, as she left town soon after, in what was either a disappearance or just a bit of irony. Who can say? The point is that she’s gone.
She didn’t approach me [...]
My wife and I have three children, so going out on dates doesn’t happen more than twice a year at the most. Last month I bought tickets for us to see a great band called Medeski, Martin, and Wood in Northampton, Massachusetts. The first time I got tickets to see them, two or so years [...]
Anything that has been “bathing my brain tissue” over the past four years can’t be great for me. The idea of anything bathing, or washing over, my brain matter is somewhat of a sensation, but it depends on the chemical. The current chemicals in there aren’t working. In the morning I swallow the pills with [...]
My son is six and draws and writes every day. He’s getting better each hour, it seems, and it’s a lesson to me that a writer must write often, not necessarily every day, but often. The great Francois Camoin told me that the mind needs time to accumulate experience. So I’m thinking to write every [...]
I’m always writing, even when I haven’t a pen in hand or a keyboard in front of me. I forgot who said it, maybe Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson…somebody…said something like, “My wife doesn’t understand that even when I’m staring out the window, I’m working…”
My wife thinks this is all bullshit, of course. Who wouldn’t?
So I [...]
I turned in my first bit of my novel to the workshop group. I didn’t qualify it with any critical commentary, because I can’t stand when writers do that. Students I can tolerate because they are scared of just about everything — especially sharing their writing with others. I’m scared, too, but I know no [...]
I teach at a prep school, so when vacations come, they come in a nice row of days off. So I got up early today, took the kids to daycare, got a coffee at Starbucks (had to wait for the coffee…had to wait for coffee…at STARBUCKS), came home, took the garbage out, let the dog [...]