Benches are so much more than merely a place to sit. Arranged around campus they seem like sentinels watching over a particular vista or guarding a quiet corner. Should you happen across one, it invites you to pause and maybe even to linger. Alone or with a friend, passionate conversation or silent observation, it matters […]
Following the lead of others requires little effort and less courage. “Innovate and iterate” while a route to financial success and often a means of improving our efficiencies rarely produces genuinely new and imaginative things. To strike out on your own requires conviction and courage. To pursue your own goals wherever they might lead demands […]
Winter has happened this year, or at least February has already been properly cold and snow-filled. We’ve had some wonderful days of blowing, bitter snow storms. A thick layer of snow covers the ice on the local pond. The storms keep people inside, and so naturally I’m compelled to be out, wandering the streets and […]
Often I want to be alone, to avoid the company of others. I am no misanthrope nor do I aspire to be a hermit, but the constant din of daily life does little for me. I much prefer solitude, the restorative companionship of quiet, both in an acoustic and in a psychological sense. But it’s […]
For me, creativity fulfills its purpose when realized in the creation of something. I am not particularly bothered if nobody likes it (either in the traditional sense of like or in the social media sense of like). I don’t take pictures, make photographs, collect moments and scenes, or write words either hoping for approval or […]
A cold wind whistled through the branches. The winter wind is different. Not simply frigid, though it is surely that, even the slightest breeze produces a haunting, lonely sound. I stand at the edge of a meadow listening to an arboreal death rattle, frozen branches creaking as dry air wheezes through a bronchial network of […]
Pause. Look around. Look closely. What have I not noticed every other time I’ve passed this spot. Whether mundane and dull or extraordinary and beautiful. Somewhere around me right now is a detail I’ve not seen before. Find it and add it to my “Museum of Overlooked Details.”
On a typical weekday afternoon, a line of cars stretches down to the stoplight at the bottom, often twenty or so of them stopped on their trip home. On the other side, cars that have recently come through the intersection careen home. Crossing, even in the marked crosswalk, is a risk. This afternoon, I enjoyed […]