Author Archives: John Swinburn

Imagine yourself out for a run, or a walk, through the forest. A mile away from the nearest house, you spot a raccoon in the trail in front of you. Though it’s an unusual sighting in broad daylight, more unusual … Continue reading →

We tie ourselves in knots made of sinew and sweat, stress and seclusion, sincerity and suspicion. Nothing is its own thing anymore; everything belongs to something or someone else. Community, insatiable in its allure, topples the towers of individualism, releasing … Continue reading →

A river of light sits just beyond the dark edges of the unseen horizon, poised to burst into morning. Before long, I expect light to flood through the windows. That river of light, spilling from the sky, will flush darkness … Continue reading →

The shooting in Washington, DC today pierced my heart. It showed me that even people who share my political and social perspectives can be just as monstrous, just as vile as people I’ve labeled demonic and uncaring. I condemn the … Continue reading →

It’s silly to allow a person I find irrelevant, yet offensive, to get under my skin, isn’t it? Yes, indeed it is. But I’m silly in that way. I react to his remarks, obviously intended as provocations, as if they’ve … Continue reading →

This is post number two thousand three hundred and fifty. That’s a boatload of posts. I’ll readily admit the vast majority of them are meritless drivel, thought spilled from the mind of a man who’s confused and uncertain, manic and … Continue reading →

A while ago, as I sat on the screened porch—eating my dinner of a sardicado sandwich on pumpernickel bread, accompanied by a Shiner Bock beer—I watched a storm brew in the distance. Angry clouds stirred in the distant sky and moved … Continue reading →

Last night, after an early dinner at a nearby restaurant, we sat outside in the screened porch. We heard turkeys and various other birds. And we heard the song or call of a bird I did not know, but which … Continue reading →

Maybe it was an epiphany. Maybe it was just a conscious acknowledgement of something I’ve known all along. Whatever it was, it changed the way I looked at the world for a moment. I sat outside, inside the screen porch, … Continue reading →

The internet leveled the playing field. It gave the unhinged and deranged equal access to tools of mass communication, enabling those monsters the unfettered ability to share twisted philosophies with their brethren. Their virulent ideologies spread, infecting those who had theretofore … Continue reading →

He clothed himself in invisible shackles, bands of doubt that tethered him so tightly to the lack of belief in himself that he could barely breathe. He spent his life searching for keys to the locks that kept him chained … Continue reading →

This morning, the sky merges with the earth in a grey vapor, the air damp and heavy. The atmosphere appears to be struggling to move, the clots of fog moving in slow motion, as if deliberating their next move. Will they fly … Continue reading →

I read a Facebook post that moved me almost to tears. “Almost” is a slight exaggeration. The post was made by a woman whose seventy-year-old father had served in Vietnam. Her father and another soldier broke a host of rules … Continue reading →