drmstream[writing]

I’ve started from no place. I am going to no place. What occu­pies me in the mid­dle, the con­cen­trated effort of climb­ing from one rung to another, the aware­ness of the aching in my calf and shoul­der, the chaf­ing on my palms, the dizzy­ing dis­tance of every­thing, can not occupy me at the end. At the end there […]

I The bath­room is a squared-off bit of dry­wall at the far back of the garage. It’s in Chelsea, near to the river, where the streets get wider and the air car­ries some of the fra­grance of the salt off the ocean. As you walk back to the dark door of the bath­room, slip­ping sideways […]

Objects become arti­facts despite them­selves. They are placed for a pur­pose, are defined in that moment by their util­ity, and then aban­doned to the kinetic decay of iner­tia. In that decay, they dis­cover a disheveled grace, like an aged beauty cap­tured in a soul-searing smile. Look around you today. What can you see that was […]

If once the boy within us ceases to speak to the man who enfolds him, the shape of life is bro­ken and there is, lit­er­ally, no more to be said. – Sean O’Faolain This is how it starts: fin­gers poised, your imag­i­na­tion press­ing at your joints. Then you hit the keys, click, clack, click, clack. The […]

The table was made out of an old wire spool.  We cut the top off, pulled the slats out and made a tri­an­gu­lar base from heavy maple.  I don’t know how many yards of wire the spool held, but it must have been a lot, because we could fit the eight of us around the […]

Silence A day of Silence Can be a pil­grim­age in itself. A day of Silence Can help you lis­ten To the Soul play Its mar­vel­lous lute and drum. Is not most talk­ing A crazed defence of a crum­bling fort? I thought we came here To sur­ren­der in Silence, To yield to Light and Hap­pi­ness, To Dance within […]

At Storm King, the unpar­al­leled sculp­ture gar­den in New York’s Hud­son Val­ley, an decay­ing stone wall wound through the old dairy fields. The sculp­tor Andy Goldswor­thy over two sum­mers in 1997 and 1998 directed the struc­ture of a new stone wall along the path of the old one. The new wall has a for­mal ele­gance that […]

< My 12 year old is being taught how to keep a writer’s note­book in his Eng­lish class. It’s a won­der­ful gift that he approaches with un-self con­scious enthu­si­asm. Here’s a page.

The pho­tog­ra­pher is hid­den behind the lens. We see our­self through him, pass through his iden­tity in pur­suit of our van­ity with hardly a thought. What does the pho­tog­ra­pher think? A few weeks ago I posted a sketch inspired by a iconic photo of the civil rights move­ment taken by an iconic pho­tog­ra­pher, Ernest With­ers. I […]

Love is life. All, every­thing that I under­stand, I under­stand only because I love. Every­thing is, every­thing exists, only because I love. Every­thing is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a par­ti­cle of love, shall return to the gen­eral and eter­nal source. Leo Tol­stoy A Russ­ian chapel, photographed […]