drmstream[writing]

This isn’t our nor­mal Mother’s Day. I didn’t get to the card store. We had to go to Ken­tucky to the Derby. We missed my niece’s First Com­mu­nion. The boys keep falling down while we’re gone and send­ing us texts with pho­tos of their ugly bruises. When you wake up this morn­ing, I want you […]

Argu­men­tum Ornitho­log­icum I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a sec­ond or per­haps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the num­ber of birds def­i­nite or indef­i­nite? The prob­lem involves the exis­tence of God. If God exists, the num­ber is def­i­nite, because God knows how […]

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 […]

I flew from Atlanta to Los Ange­les last night. I couldn’t get com­fort­able in my seat. There was noth­ing to eat. After a few hours I was rest­less, drop­ping in and out of a bad nap. Thank god I wasn’t tak­ing the Main­line route — 15–1/2 hours and I would have been a puddle.

To make art, we have to let go of our con­cep­tions, tram­ple our struc­tures, release our soul. When we have laid it all out, we’ll under­stand our­selves, the essence of our sound. This takes courage. This great photo is one of many musi­cian pho­tos by Juan Car­los Hernandez.

This is John the Evan­ge­list, who wrote the Gospel of John.  John was the wit­ness, the dis­ci­ple who was always in the right place at the right time.  The eagle that soars into the sky, hold­ing a man­u­script in its talons, is a  metaphor for his faith. Some 700 years after the death of Christ, a […]

One cul­ture, two expe­ri­ences. On the left, pros­per­ity reaches out in the shape of dis­tant cousins, fam­i­lies that have left the home­land; on the right, the suf­fer­ing and oppressed, mod­est and mea­gre, eyes cast across the ocean in long­ing and res­ig­na­tion. Lady Lib­erty lingers in the back­ground. This card was used to mark the celebration […]

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 […]

I don’t like shar­ing writ­ing here that’s ill-considered and unformed. The excerpt below is an excep­tion. It’s a recent note from my work­book. I’d seen a pic­ture of T & me from Mother’s Day and was dis­cour­aged by how swollen and weighted down l looked. My phys­i­cal real­ity had sep­a­rated from my self-perception. That kind […]

Dur­ing my life­time the pop­u­la­tion of the world has dou­bled, a phe­nom­e­non that cap­ti­vates me with its myr­iad impli­ca­tions. Mix in the length­en­ing of lifes­pans and we are faced with an entirely new propo­si­tion on how to live a life. Do the tra­di­tions, habits and cul­tural mores that have been handed down over gen­er­a­tions have relevance […]