Hot and Heavy Today, which is Monday, February 22nd it is supposed to hit 78 degrees here on our hilltop. I don’t know why that surprises me other than to say that I am not yet totally acclimated to living here in Southern California. I started my day by driving to the local Hidden Meadows Market and getting a breakfast burrito for myself and an Asahi bowl for Kim, so clearly some parts of my…
The Totems of My Life I am not certain why or how it has happened, but I am surrounded by totems. They mean everything and yet they mean nothing at all. Just this week, Kim gave me a birthday/anniversary/Valentines gift she had had made for me by her favorite gift store in New York, named Domus on West 44th Street in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. In Ancient Rome, a domus was a distinguished house…
War Games Soliloquy I can’t seem to help myself from getting into unintended projects. You’ve heard how this happens to me at my hilltop home, now let’s discuss my writing. I publish one story a day on this blog (occasionally supplemented with an extra and usually timely story here and there). That is about 1,300 words per day on average. People brag about Jack London writing 1,000 words a day every day. So, I think…
Yucca Yucca Yucca Get too close to a Yucca and you get a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, actually a sharp sword-like leaf end. It’s actually a bigger and more serious hazard than I make it sound. Yucca leaves are about eighteen inches long and spring forth in every direction from the end of the branch. They actually form a sort of ball of green leaves about three feet in diameter. A…
Seize the Day After Day For years I have adopted Carpe Diem as one of my personal themes. I have a copy of my 60th Birthday invitation which declares Carpe Diem. It was seeing that invitation on my office wall that caused me to think about how long I have been working to seize the day, over and over again. Today and tomorrow (as well as yesterday), I have been focused on seizing the moment…
Lazy Day Kim gave me one of those 25-pound blankets for my birthday. We’ve been joking about them every time we see them advertised on TV, but I had no idea that she would buy one. For some reason I was very tired last night so I crawled into bed early and I do mean crawled because getting under that heavy blanket takes some effort. I don’t know whether it was being so tired or…
Wetter and Wilder in the Moment Tomorrow I turn sixty-seven. Since I am four days ahead of myself with my writing (a sure sign that I’ve been cooped up by the weather lately), you’ll be reading this when I am into my sixty-eighth year. I have a good relationship with aging, so I almost always refer to myself as being at the age of the year I am working on. That means that in a…
Hear Me Roar There is a little movie out there that has some great stars in it, but only ever did less than $50 million in box office receipts, so was not widely seen. It is called Secondhand Lions and starred Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Haley Joel Osment and Kyra Sedgwick. It was written and directed by an obscure Tim McCanlies who’s only other claim to fame was the Iron Giant animated film. The film…
What the Succulent? Today we are at the end of January, which means that in a few days I will have completed a full year of California residency, spending the vast majority of my days on this hilltop, with clear views to the ocean and mountains alike. As I sit in the living room I see verdant gardens to my left and dry hillside chaparral to my right. The sun is streaming in and we…
Drafting The word draft is one of those English words with not only multiple meanings, but the word takes the form of a verb, an adverb, an adjective and a whole array of nouns all at once . You can draft a draft of a proposal to draft a drafting specialist by sending him a draft as a down payment to help correct flaws of a drafty room before he or she gets conscripted in…