The List

It’s dangerous to sit around with not much to do. One could get bored, or do something drastic, like make a list. * * * Your fingers fidget, lay hold of the ink pen on the table, slide over a nice clean sheet of paper. Before you know it, the pen and the paper eyeball …

Hedging Our Bets

Shadows are always dark. *** Blame it on Newton: For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Took him three laws to infer that every action is a gamble. He never even suggested a hedge. Chew on that for a while. The thought bounced around in my dream like a marble in a tin …

The Ladder

It stands there, silent, stoic and stately as a stature, signifying nothing. * * * It’s not hard to find ‘nothing’ to write about. Just look around, plenty of it out there. The hard part is to make ‘something’ out of the ‘nothing.’ God did, you say. Well, guess who we’re not… Take this ladder, …

Amazon Made Me Lazy

As surely as the sparks fly upward, I was born lazy. * * * Life reviews are a trap. Avoid self-analysis. The excursion will reveal uncomfortable truths better left buried. Ask your spouse instead. They have all the answers. Be wary of any discussion about your moral failings. If trapped, simply blame anything close at …

A Flip of the Calendar

It’s done. The old calendar tossed, the new one is open for business. Expectations are running red hot. We can hardly wait for the Happy and New to take hold. * * * You’ve probably already transferred last year’s carryover must-do’s to this year’s calendar. You’re surprised by how the days are already filled and …

A Second Wind

There are times when it seems life has run out of steam.  The space between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is one of them. * * * It’s the week after Christmas, or ‘holiday’ if you’re part of the crowd of alchemists that mix Christmas with Visa and come up with a concoction called Santa. …

A New Pleasure

The other day I invented a new pleasure. * * * A new pleasure, you say? I hear your rebuttals now. You’re thinking, is there anything new under the sun? Is there anything Google or AI have not conceived?  Tell us more. I was sitting around reading lines from a poem by Coleridge, “In Xanadu …