personal essay | personal essay
Nov.28.2012
There was a time when I was keenly aware of how much electricity I used: None. For nine months, I lived so far off the grid in Nepal the very idea that an invisible power could travel through skinny lengths of flexible metal to make a flame-free fire that could light up the night seemed...
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Sep.15.2012
A long-term illness is like living in a cardboard box. I’m looking out through a proscenium of dusty brown corrugated walls, flexible, but strong and thick enough so they can’t be torn apart, only weakened. There’s a dry mustiness about everything.
The illness filtered into me during twilight, on...
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Jul.18.2012
Editor Bruce Gillespie is making a call for submissions for an anthology of personal essays about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and transsexual people and their families. The collection will be part of a series about the changing nature of the family in the 21st century published by...
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Jul.06.2012
It’s interesting for me to step back and examine my writing progression. I read an essay this morning that I wrote in the spring of 2006 for a Stress and Human Health class. The title of the paper is “Behavior Modification: Toward Self-Empowerment.” It’s about four pages, double-spaced. I can tell...
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Apr.19.2012
I had to turn off Yahoo Safe Search to find this image, I’ll have you know!
This morning I went down to our large garage (an extremely rare Bay Area phenomenon) and dug out the March 1977 issue of Playboy magazine.
I’d bought that issue, used, for author Jules Siegal’s memoir about his strained...
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Apr.14.2012
Oakland Bay Bridge, April 12, 2012
A couple nights ago, a rare thunderstorm boomed across the Bay Area, one of the biggest storms in years. On the coast, we get them once a year, at most.
Thunderstorms don’t come often enough for me. I enjoyed how every flash brightly flickered into our house,...
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Feb.17.2012
There was no flash on the road to Damascus in becoming a writer, no falling on my face, crying “I hear you, Lord!” ]
(I don’t trust conversion experiences; it’s too easy to flip back, or flip on to another empty extreme; fanatics are much like vampires, draining the juicy life out of the...
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Jan.28.2012
“Sheesh, what the hell is this? You think you’re a dog!?”
HOW IT STARTED
Before February 1964, I was a dog guy. Then, soon after the Beatles rolled ashore that bleak late winter, I read in some fan magazine that my favorite Fab, John Lennon, liked cats. Therefore, to be more like John...
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Jan.21.2012
Some people—namely my wife—call me the . . .
. . . Cat Whisperer . . .
<Cue music sting>
I usually work like this: I walk into your house. I meet your cat. An hour later, I stroll out with cat tucked happily under my arm, while you shake your head in wonder: “But he doesn’t do that...
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Jan.04.2012
DO NOT CATCH THIS FLU. The Flu first emerges as a deceptively mild cold that lasts for 3 days or so. You may even feel the cold disappearing and your energy flaring anew, but DO NOT BE FOOLED. For verily, on the 4th day, the Flu shall blossom and soak and rage through your helpless flesh, and...
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