Posted on

Stealing the souls of children


“People pay for what they do,and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”

James Baldwin 

My hand, the bay’s gift, returned

In the end, it’s the ground that will save us, if we are, or even want, to be saved.

We’re of the mud, of the air, of the water, of the sun. We diminish the folks before us on this once fine land when we “honor” these as metaphors.

We diminish our ancestors from our homelands who spoke of the spirits and the blurring of the lines between the living and the dead as autumn darkness presses on our souls.


Cliffs of Moher, County Clare (Aaron Logan via Wikimedia)

These are not simply metaphors or myths or models. They are ways to understand the world, the world beyond the digital.

You cannot grasp a fistful of earth through a screen.
Our hands were made for more than pushing keys.

We are stripping the souls from our children.

We become who we deserve to become.
But we should let our children decide whether a soul is worth keeping.

Winter is coming, again.

Posted on

The quick, the yeast, and the dead

Every damn time I throw dough in the oven or clams on the stove I pray to the Holy Whatever (for who knows the agony of heat besides the heretics, the saints, the damned, and the unlucky).

Consciousness is as overrated as life is underrated.

Yeast are alive. I know they breathe (or else we’d have no crumb), and I know they convert wheat and water into alcohol–I can smell it.

Before I cast the yeast into a hot oven they are eating, fooking, budding, breathing, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. They know other yeast are nearby.

You are not special–you will die, too.

So live a yeasty life, while you can.

Posted on

Clamming in November

You don’t need much.

Yesterday’s “catch”

A rake, a basket, a mud flat, and if you’re so inclined, a license.

Take what you need for dinner, eat them before the next low tide. I put the smallest and the largest back into the flat, tucking them into the mud, keeping a promise made years ago to my niece who loves clams but not killing.

A tired November bee on a tithonia flower

November can be kind, but more often than not, the dying light is unkind to those creatures that depend on the sun.

But the creatures keep moving, and so do I, to the rhythm of the tides and the pull of the rake, one life feeding on another, grace for one, the abyss for the other.