drmstream[writing]

You could tell when he got up to the podium that he had seen some­thing that he couldn’t leave behind, that time had stopped and he was claw­ing at it. He was the last speaker for the night. He wasn’t pol­ished. His hair was uneven, plas­tered on his fore­head by a layer of sweat. The suit […]

Don’t you love the com­mu­nity around your inter­ests and enthu­si­asms that you find on the web? You can’t repli­cate the expe­ri­ence any­where in real life: the vari­ety of view­points, the excite­ment of shar­ing and the feel­ing of val­i­da­tion that comes from con­sort­ing with peo­ple who see the world from the same angle but who are […]

Alex would stop by in the morn­ing on the way to the shack where Nathan kept the two trucks down by the rail yard. Louis liked to wait for his cousin on the back step. He would watch Alex step­ping up the street, at one moment firm and quick in his stride, then just as […]

    My face is blank.  Soft skin.  The hint of lines.  More like you than not like you. You don’t like to see my face con­tort, its plas­tic­ity mak­ing anger, joy, sad­ness, fear.  When my face con­torts you think I look wrong. What we’re taught:  Keep your feel­ings in check.  Make the sad things feel better. […]

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, […]

She wasn’t young any more. You can’t get a new life & still be young. The lines that were miss­ing on her hands were set­tling in her face. March 4, 2011 2:49 pm via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite @drmstream drm­stream Beth kept her kit in the bot­tom drawer of the counter at the cor­ner of the stu­dio. The […]

The orna­ment lit up in his hand. It felt like magic. Kevin took it home & wrapped it in paper. When I get my big house, he thought. March 1, 2011 2:29 pm via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite @drmstream drm­stream This is one of a series of sto­ries that I have been telling on Twit­ter.  Each para­graph is […]

He was a vio­lent man inca­pable of being faith­ful ton his wife. He was also para­noid. Those qual­i­ties doomed their mar­riage. Feb­ru­ary 17, 2011 6:19 pm via Twit­te­la­torReplyRetweetFavorite @drmstream drm­stream When you tell a story on Twit­ter, you assem­ble it into 140 char­ac­ter or fewer bits and dis­trib­ute it into the stream.  It is different […]

It starts sim­ply, in sep­a­rate places. The seed takes root.  It winds through the soil search­ing for mois­ture. The trunk sprouts soft and vul­ner­a­ble, then its hard case stiff­ens as the cold wind, bit­ing rain, steamy sun buf­fet it. The tree grows. Across the path, another tree grows too. Both trees spread their boughs wide, present […]

My sense of self and my pri­vate desires got boxed in a mile high in the sky yes­ter­day. I almost didn’t make it through. I was fly­ing out to Los Ange­les for a busi­ness meet­ing. I had a win­dow seat in the front of the plane. An attrac­tive and com­posed young woman sat in the […]