Author Archives: John Swinburn

A certain philosophy admonishes us to, in effect, “live for today, for tomorrow you may die.” Increasingly, I find myself accepting that philosophy’s premise. I do not subscribe to a related philosophy that excuses an utterly careless lifestyle that involves … Continue reading →

The clothing we wear is dictated, in large part, by our social environments. Our social environments emerge from innumerable factors that combine to create our cultures. According to notes from a University of Michigan “women’s studies” course entitled Gender and … Continue reading →

How could I have lived this long without being exposed to the incredible allure of the poetry and prose of Gretel Ehrlich? Reading her words is like absorbing a powerful, painful, yet addictive shock–one that cries out for more of … Continue reading →

I thought the problem was my computer. Or my smartphone. But it’s clearly not them. They are not to blame. Google is to blame. Google’s Gmail is refusing to accept some messages sent to me, yet Google notifies no one … Continue reading →

When I woke from a dream this morning around 3, I made a point of focusing on the dream so I would remember it when I awakened for the day a few hours later. Then, later, when I finally got … Continue reading →

How is it, I wonder, that an ongoing, but unspoken, longing transforms from an aspiration to a concrete action? The answer, I think, is hidden beneath the rubble of private thoughts; wishes kept in a locked box, its key concealed … Continue reading →

Fierce rainstorms—replete with high winds, brilliant flashes of lightning, and house-rattling claps of rolling thunder—began yesterday afternoon and grew progressively more powerful during the night. At the moment, the incessant noise and blinding lightning seem to have settled down; I … Continue reading →

We got home last night, a day earlier than we originally had planned, because weather forecasts suggested today would be a miserably wet, unpleasant drive. This morning’s weather forecast presented a somewhat different outlook, calling for light rain in the … Continue reading →

The motel breakfast bar is bustling this morning with several of the same people who started the day yesterday with dark roast coffee and assembly line eggs and sausage. That description of the breakfast service is not meant to be … Continue reading →

Huntsville changed dramatically in the nine or ten years since my last visit. Even then, it had morphed from the sleepy college community of the mid-seventies into a sprawling rural town trying desperately—but failing—to be urban. Now, roughly a decade … Continue reading →

Even in the midst of turbulence and trouble, some days wrap their hours around you in a tender embrace. They remind you that life is, for most of us, tender and gentle. Yesterday was such a day. The few gratifying … Continue reading →

My habit of getting up early and—thirty minutes to an hour after I wake—spending a like amount of time writing for my blog, is firmly entrenched. It is sufficiently habitual that I feel uncomfortable when circumstances prevent me from keeping … Continue reading →

The weather forecasters predict today will be another of those late Winter days when Spring attempts to burst through the wreckage of the previous season. They forecast the day will start clear and cool—temperatures in the low 40s—and will finish … Continue reading →

A couple of days ago, at my invitation, my sister-in-law came to my house to go through my late wife’s jewelry. Even though my wife died fifteen months ago, I have been unable to force myself to do anything with … Continue reading →

We departed Standard Time on March 13 at 2:00 a.m. We will return to Standard Time on November 6 at 2:00 a.m. That change in clock has disturbed my patterns. I was used to getting up no later than 5:00 … Continue reading →

The ancient Mayan calendar’s fourteenth month, K’ank’in, was represented by the glyph for the avocado, according to the avocadosfrommexico.com website. The same source asserts that the avocado was first domesticated roughly 5,000 years ago, “making the cultivation of avocados as … Continue reading →

The very first time we open our eyes, after birth, everything in our blurred field of vision is miraculous and new. Opening our eyes is one of the only things we can do on our own at that moment; otherwise, … Continue reading →

A visit to an old cemetery that reached capacity ten ore more generations earlier tells the story of the enduring legacies most of us living today can expect to leave. At most, we will leave a barely discernable name on … Continue reading →

Some days, one’s thoughts are suited to a small, intimate circle. The wider world does not care, nor does it have an investment in knowing, what is on one’s mind. To the world at large, if the world notices at … Continue reading →

Something incomprehensible powers the universe. Perhaps it is the universe itself, the one and only creator and recipient of the effects of perpetual motion. The universe is the only real model of self-creation, self-replication, and self-renewal. The universe created itself … Continue reading →

At my core, I am a tranquil man. Deep inside me, buried beneath the façade of a sometimes explosive temper and an anxious, excitable shell, is a man who attaches great value to serenity; not just for myself, but for … Continue reading →

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice. ~ Henry Louis Gates Jr ~ I absolutely hate finding myself in agreement with anything one might find on Fox News, but that’s the situation in which I find myself with … Continue reading →

Between 1:30 and 4:30 this morning, I felt like I was in limbo, between periods of semi-consciousness and being wide-awake. The whistling, wheezing sounds of my breathing—coupled with constant bothersome aches and cramps in the muscles in my arms and … Continue reading →

No disease is incurable. No injury is too severe to be reversed. We simply lack the knowledge necessary to cure the disease or heal the injury. I believe humans have the capacity to cure—and even to eliminate—every disease. I think … Continue reading →

The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao.     ~ Lao Tzu ~ Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching, … Continue reading →