Recent Entries

• Awakened

  April 4, 2025

  Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement. Buddha If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change. Buddha A fellow diarist once wrote this to me in a note, and I was deeply moved: I am fortunate in that I have a best friend…

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• Some thoughts as I ponder the meaning and purpose, rewards and consequences of life (Part 1)

  March 29, 2025

    I have reached a state in life where the major lessons have been presented to me and mostly learned. Now is the time to think about what life has meant from all that I have done and experienced, and what it’s purpose has been. To that end, I find myself thinking more deeply about…

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• A quiet amble in the Unitarian Church graveyard and garden on a perfect Spring afternoon

  March 25, 2025

  Yesterday afternoon on a perfect Spring day in March, I decided to park my car in my old neighborhood and walk to King Street and visit the Preservation Society book and gift shop downtown. On the way back, I decided to turn left and walk down an alleyway that led to Archdale Street, which is&hel...

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• There’s always a road to New Hope, somewhere

  March 17, 2025

  I’m back in the Memory Vault, reading essays I wrote many years ago. This one brought back both dreadful and bittersweet memories of a year and time that marked a new beginning after my second struggle with a long period of unemployment, followed by major depression and anxiety. Most of 1994 was ...

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• A cherished and transcendental experience on an early Spring afternoon

  March 11, 2025

  Walking through the world in the way I choose—by which I mean, with attention, by which I mean, leisurely—has given me a great many things, such as life itself, the ability to go on, the ability to see what is beautiful, and to understand what is worth seeing. Mary Oliver – Upstream (2016) To lea...

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• Rivers, creeks and streams: a retrospective look back, and a glimpse of what I treasure today

  March 4, 2025

  Handwritten journal entry, Fall 1986 Relaxed this afternoon in the shade of a sandbar beside Black Creek. The stream flowed by as moving leaves on the surface marked its passage. The water level was the lowest I’ve yet seen for the creek, and will get lower as the dry month of October approaches....

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• Once upon a time in Nebraska

  February 23, 2025

    Back in the 1980s when I was traveling around the country every year like a nomad or Gypsy, I crossed Nebraska several times and always marveled at it’s wide open spaces, hilly Sandhills grasslands, small towns in the middle of nowhere, spring-fed rivers and a general feeling of bring in A...

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• Some thoughts on why I write

  February 19, 2025

    Writing is the axe that breaks the frozen sea within. Kafka Journals hint at what’s long been hidden under the ice. They shimmer with patterns of longing, secrets, untold stories. The diarist plays detective to his own days, uncovering the extraordinary in the ordinary, the true story bene...

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• The objects we collect are more than meet the eye

  February 13, 2025

  You know how there are little tokens, icons, “things” which people buy on a whim or pick up at souvenir and gift shops? Some people have frog collections with cupboards and china cases full of the little green amphibians in every guise and pose, funny and serious. Philosopher frogs and dopey, dum...

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