drmstream[writing]

It is time to leave now. When it started, it was time to go.  Pick up and go from your home.  Take a bag.  Go live in this ‘camp’ behind barbed wire fences and men with guns. You have nar­row eyes.  Your lips are thin.  Your skin is dif­fer­ent.  You have to go away. Because you might kill […]

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 […]

    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. […]

  When we read a story, our brains plot every­thing that’s going on, from the character’s phys­i­cal loca­tions in space to their inter­ac­tions with objects in the envi­ron­ment to their pur­suit of var­i­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tional goals.  Many of the brain areas active while read­ing are also active when we actu­ally take part in or […]

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 […]

When you walk into a grave­yard, there is nobody there. There is no sud­den rever­sal of time, no enlight­en­ing con­se­quence of the human mys­tery unwound by a talk­ing head­stone, or a friendly ghost, or a time switch that leaves you snug­gled against your grand­mother dur­ing a rag­ing bliz­zard. You can’t turn the cor­ner of the […]

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 […]

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 […]

Two things have hap­pened over the past week: I let my daily rou­tine of post­ing here slip; and, I’ve gone back to a note­book from last year to visit the two pages that are dupli­cated above. I’m try­ing to under­stand how they are related. The notes were the begin­ning of an essay on writer’s block. I’ve […]