drmstream[writing]

Writ­ing prac­tice keeps your brain awake and alive; it improves your abil­ity to con­cen­trate.  Whether or not you ever pub­lish a thing, reg­u­lar writ­ing prac­tice will give you skills you can use in your work and your per­sonal life, and make you feel more empow­ered.  It will improve your abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate, stim­u­late your curiosity, […]

This must be the week that small presses, indie jour­nals and agents plow through their in-boxes. I’ve got­ten a slew of rejec­tions this week — no inter­ests on a short novel I’ve been send­ing around, no thanks you’s on a cou­ple of sto­ries that are cir­cu­lat­ing and flat out nopes on an essay I had […]

This is where I am: An old man dying from can­cer, but still vital and bemused by the inten­sity of life, is walk­ing on a dark path that runs behind an old house down the hill to the run­down apart­ment build­ing he lives in. The lit­tle patch of woods is the byprod­uct of a geo­log­i­cal quirk. Millenniums […]

  I was at lunch with an artist today and asked him about his work. “I keep push­ing ahead and it changes,” he said. I asked him to describe a cre­ative phase that was par­tic­u­larly dis­tinc­tive. He became ani­mated as he talked about the chal­lenge of adding a third dimen­sion to his paint­ing. “I painted a very […]

  What I see clearly I pass by. What I see but do not see, I stand to wit­ness. My heart goes wan­der­ing, pulls my soul from its slum­ber, pesters mem­o­ries to give up their hard, wary shell and stretch out in child­like glee. All while I stand cap­tive to what I see but do not see. Then […]

  There are images that stay fresh and imme­di­ate years after they first occur to you. These are the images that tell you how you see the world. Metaphoric leit­mo­tifs. They are words but they are so real that we don’t rec­og­nize them as words. Our wiring fires and takes us out of the time Now. […]

Some­times when I talk I hear my voice echo­ing in my head so I stop. In mid-gesture, mid-sentence, I’ll stop and go fol­low the echo. The moment that I am in — that absolute instance of inter­ac­tion — is sep­a­rate and unique from any other moment and I want to com­mu­ni­cate in a pre­cise and fresh way. The […]

  After spend­ing a year at a casual lit­tle place called The Red Feather School, I was sent off to pub­lic shool for sec­ond grade. It didn’t take long for the grown-ups at the school to take note of the kid who was always a cou­ple of beats off, looked con­fused and offered answers that were […]

I love you with every piece of my being. I’m inside you all the time. I am strong because you are strong. I see beauty because you are beau­ti­ful.  I can be open and gen­er­ous because you hold my heart gen­tly. You but­tress the peo­ple around you. I want you to know that I will but­tress you, I […]

This pic­ture was taken at dusk in early May in my bed­room. I was 17 and fin­ish­ing up my final year of high school. My class­mate Eduardo was respon­si­ble for tak­ing the year­book pho­tographs; I was one of the hold-outs on his list. I was shy and dis­ori­ented. I still have the pho­to­graph that Eduardo […]