Empty

Sometimes you have to drain that half-empty/half-full glass, and maybe wash it.  That’s honestly where I’m at, folks. My glass feels drained. I’m not depressed, not feeling like this is it, I need to end here. Not at all. I just feel . . . like a vessel that’s held one thing for a while, […]

Creating New Mythology

Mythology is something I think about a lot. Not quite an obsession, but definitely a big thing for me. Maybe you’ve noticed. I find a strange kind of satisfaction in piecing together puzzles with missing pieces, so many missing pieces. Making wild leaps head first, connecting dots that are barely visible, finding little coincidences that […]

Mystery is Bigger Than Magic

Sometimes I create lists of writing prompts for myself, either as an exercise, or to keep this blog thing going. This one, Mystery is Bigger Than Magic, showed up on my list without my intervention. Well, maybe I typed it. I don’t know. Somebody must have. I have no idea why I would have, and I […]

Everything Is a Verb

One of my favorite Iowa poets, Deb Marquart, published a small volume of poetry manymany years back, called Everything Is A Verb. The title stuck with me, and I have revisited many of the poems over and over as well. But that idea, that everything, everything, is a verb . . . Mr. Rogers reminded […]

Fragments Lost, and Found Again

I’ve been on a songwriting kick. (Yay! Dry spell over!) I’ve written two songs in as many weeks, and am working on two more. So the fields have done the fallow thing, and they’re over it. Let’s grow something! One of the things I frequently do to encourage inspiration to flow is to go through […]

Fallow Time

Creativity can come in fits and starts, bursts, deluges, or . . . not.  Sometimes, we’re empty. There’s nothing pressing we’re trying to say, no epiphanies to share, no questions to pose . . . Things are good and quiet and peaceful, and we’re doing what we do, and that’s that. When I would have […]

Ya Gotta Serve Somebody

Every once in a while, I get the “disappointed” look from someone when I tell them I’m not gigging anymore. It’s a look I am intimately familiar with and highly sensitive to.  Some people think I gave up out of heartbreak and sadness that I never got my pitcher on the cover of the Rolling […]