Mindfulness for those who would rather not
In tight Quarters
What a great and terrifying experience. In the tight quarters of a fifth wheel trailer everything is amplified. Sitting on the couch I am three feet from three furnace exhaust fans blasting heat, and the cold air return. I’m four feet from the kitchen that also serves as dining room with kitty litter box, front…
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A Stone Quiet Firmament
Everything is stone quiet; the snow-covered fields, traffic on the highway distant below, jet planes above in the firmament. Even the farm dogs deep in the valley volleying barks with the coyotes, all of that tussle muted on the damp, heavy air. Everything is stone quiet. Stone quiet, and the moon is one day past…
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Being Present, Right Now
Some days it strikes me that most important things I learn through the days I’ve already known at one point or another. Being present is one of them. This morning I was walking back from the gas station where I’m working. I stopped to pet the neighbor’s dogs who came running out to the road…
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Powerful Words from a First Nations Elder
A year or two ago I was fortunate enough to hear elder Sykes Powderface speaking to a small group of mostly First Nations students at Exshaw School in the Canadian Rockies. He was telling them stories of growing up, of learning from his parents and grandparents, and the students sat riveted. When he asked them…
Read MoreSelf Serve Gas Station
This is poorly written, but what the hell. 11:30. It’ll take me about twenty minutes to walk there and I’m to start at 1:00, so I have about an hour left before my first shift. I’ll need to shower. I shaved yesterday. I’ll need to dig out some clothes too that don’t look like I…
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On Vulnerability
It was while standing on the roof of the trailer that it came to me, not a flash but a slow wave of understanding. A vulnerability that has been stewing for the last four months. The sun was shining bright but low in the sky, midday shadows dark and long across the snow trading space…
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Last Day of 2017
Can having a cold become an existential quagmire? If you’re of my ilk, the answer is yes! It would be nice to write something poignant for New Year’s Eve, but truth of the matter is I’ve been so sick lately that I’m lucky to string two coherent words together. Don’t worry, it’s “just a cold,”…
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Notes
It’s not as though I haven’t been thinking about writing. I think about it constantly, I live in constant introspection and observation. And I have been writing. I’ve started more sentences than I can finish. My thoughts are My thoughts are And yet there’s this feeling in my stomach of a certain certainty, things that…
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Beasts of God – Day 13
Sorry, the first iteration of this post was messed up… Enjoy!… Quiet. Pure quiet. Pure quiet and the cold, bitter silence that comes of the coldest bits of a winter night in late December. Billy laid in bed for a short time snuffling snot through his nose and down his throat and then sometimes coughing…
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