drmstream[writing]

  I read a book the other day that is very pop­u­lar with peo­ple who are look­ing for answers to uni­ver­sal ques­tions.  The writ­ing was con­cise and clear, and the imagery was acces­si­ble, despite strik­ing me as overly sim­ple. Most strik­ing was the style.  Every chap­ter was short, every para­graph was short, every sen­tence was short. […]

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 father was always the last guy to buy a Christ­mas tree.  He explained that the prices were cheap­est the day before Christ­mas.  He didn’t dwell on how bad the selec­tion was. So we’d be dri­ving along the coun­try roads a day or two before Christ­mas, look­ing for a tree stand that was still open and […]

Louis stood at the head of the alley. Tents stretched as far he could see. Their flaps hung limp. It was hot. On the train down, two women had fainted and on the wagon ride over to the tent city his bowler had gath­ered a pock­et­ful of dust. They had fol­lowed a high ridge that […]

Cuth­bert the appren­tice cus­to­dian looks around the vast room in despair. Boxes, con­tain­ers, books and glass­ware are strewn across the thick oak shelves, the heavy glass cab­i­nets that had been mitered and glazed by long for­got­ten appren­tices like him, the end­lessly long wooden tables. Every­thing in this stor­age room is man­dated to be made of […]

An old tree came down at the edge of the prop­erty in a wind­storm. It sat below the cot­tage at the edge of the farm road. The base was mas­sive and marred with water bumps, knocks and scars. Time had thinned out the top, mak­ing it appear fore­short­ened against the sky. The trunks and branches […]

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 […]

The sky lit up sul­furous and unnat­ural. The dull thumps and whistling screeches rang in the air, a few beats off. We sat down by the water wait­ing for the town fire­works to start. The coun­try club up the hill was wind­ing their dis­play down. A fam­ily could have sat here 240 years ago and wit­nessed the […]

Art can­not shake off its mag­i­cal ante­cedants, nor can it be sealed off from tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. The Dialec­tic of Enlight­en­ment, Horkheimer & Adorno

An essen­tial step for­ward is the devel­op­ment of a fit­ting order of the day: a divi­sion of the day that gives a rhythm to the day, with a rea­son­ably fixed pat­tern of exer­tion and relax­ation, of spir­i­tual breath­ing in and breath­ing out, of order­ing one’s envi­ron­ment and moments when one is in touch with something […]