drmstream[writing]

a place for things that don't have a place elsewhere

Category: time

The night walk

  When I was young, I was in the habit of lying in bed in the falling night. I was wait­ing. When I would rise from the bed, my body stayed behind. This room of my child­hood was no dif­fer­ent from any other room, in any other house, in any other place. My bed rested […]

Then you go that way…”

  I responded to two e-mails today from young men who were look­ing for some life guid­ance.  After the appro­pri­ate pre­am­bles, I wrote exactly the same thing to both. Here are three ques­tions to ask your­self: What per­sonal skills and per­sonal attrib­utes do I pos­sess that will cause peo­ple to give me money? What kind of things […]

I take Adderall

I take Adderal. I didn’t used to.  I’m writ­ing an essay about it — the work­ing title is Under­stand­ing My Stu­pid. The thing about writ­ing an essay is that you have to tease out the sense in things that are loosely con­nected in your head.  Some­times the essay peters out because the things that you […]

A search for a true Voice

Sit­ting in the sec­ond story of a two-story row house in Brooklyn’s South Slope, I searched for the voice that would tell my 21-year old daugh­ter Becky some­thing about liv­ing. She’s laid up with a bro­ken foot that’s keep­ing her from work­ing at the micro-distillery where she found a job after com­ing back from Louisiana, […]

Part of my bookshelf

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.  ~George Robert Giss­ing The first time I read Flan­nery O’Connor I had to pause, go back and read para­graphs again, because the vivid­ness of her world had […]

To my daughter who turns 21 today

We drove from Gran­ite Springs to Stam­ford in the mid­dle of the night. You were born in the midst of drama and fan­fare. I held you in the hos­pi­tal room, fell in love with you and have loved you ever since. I had to go home to walk McDou­gal. I drove back in the middle […]

She was an angel”

She’s young here, not yet 20, and her future isn’t writ­ten in her face. She’s expe­ri­enced sad­ness. Her father died when she was young and her fam­ily was reduced to a mean exis­tence, the froth and friv­o­lity of a town life erased by the shad­ows of ten­e­ment rooms. But she’s smart, pretty and deter­mined. She’ll continue […]

The whole of nature in its beauty

A human being is part of a whole…[but] he expe­ri­ences him­self, his thoughts and feel­ings as some­thing sep­a­rate from the rest…This delu­sion is a kind of prison for us, restrict­ing us to our per­sonal desires and to affec­tion for a few per­sons near­est to us. Our task must be to free our­selves from this prison […]

The dead tree in our path

On a trail I walk there is an old tree that has given up life but stands rooted stolidly in the ground. The trunk is thick and black. The sea­sons have embalmed it. The wood is so hard that the bark won’t break off in your hands. The boys pick up stray scraps that have been […]

Setting off on a bicycle trip

These young men are wav­ing good­bye as they start the 1000 mile trek from Pitts­burg to New Orleans. They’ll skirt the Allegheny Moun­tains, pass into Ten­nessee and pick up the Jack­son Mil­i­tary Road for the final 400 mile descent to the Mis­sis­sippi Delta and the bay­ous and great swamps sur­round­ing New Orleans. They are following […]