I Invite You to Subscribe
-
Recent Posts
Archives
Search on this Site
Categories
Blogroll
- 86,400 Seconds
- A Song Not Scored for Breathing (Cheryl/Hope)
- Actual Unretouched Photo
- Afroculinaria
- Brittle Road
- Chuck Sigars
- CMI Assn. Mgt. Blog
- Cutting Through the Crap
- Elle Jauffret
- HSV Area Restaurants
- Lizardek's Obiter Dictum
- Me and You and Ellie
- Neflix Genre Categories
- Out of the Lotus
- Perils of Caffeine in the Evening
- The New Dharma Bums
- The Singing Wench
- Unretouched Photo
- Words/Love
- writing as jo(e)
- Your Fireant
Author Archives: John Swinburn
Safe Places
Safe places are the stuff of folklore. They exist in ever smaller numbers today, numbers smaller than zero and with even less substance. Safety, always a figment of the imagination, has vaporized into an evanescent fantasy so vague and ghostly … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized, Writing
Leave a comment
When the Clock No Longer Matters
The clock tells me it is just after seven o’clock on a Saturday morning. My brain tells me the time is much, much, much later than that. My brain tells me time no longer matters, because it’s too late. Too … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Videoanalysis and Vegetables
Last night’s Zoom videoconference was successful and not-so-successful. I think it was successful in that the participants (including me) enjoyed the opportunity to see and hear the voices of people outside today’s limited personal spheres. We all shared a little … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Thought-Skipping
Today’s post is evidence of thought-skipping, that experience in which one’s thoughts skip across many subjects in a short period of time. It’s like a smooth, flat stone thrown across the surface of a body of still water, the forward … Continue reading
Posted in Covid-19, Food, Language
Leave a comment
Transforming the Way We Relate
Last night, I posted a comment and question on Facebook: “Let’s have a long distance happy hour soon. Wine (or tequila or bourbon or…) and munchies via Zoom! Say when, people! Tomorrow?” Nine people initially responded in the affirmative; an … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Covid-19
Leave a comment
Fiction and Reality, One and the Same
There was a time, not so long ago, that I found it easy to write about fictional dystopian horrors, experiences unlike anything I ever experienced. My imagination allowed me to picture those ghastly nightmares as a dispassionate observer, watching through … Continue reading
Posted in Compassion, Covid-19, Empathy, Writing
2 Comments
Barbara, Fill in that 40-Year Gap
On New Year’s Day this year, after taking a short respite from my blog, I returned to it to find a comment on a mid-December post. The comment was from a person with whom I had had no contact for … Continue reading
Posted in Memories
2 Comments
An Irrelevant Milestone and a Little More
Yesterday’s post marked number 3200 since I began this blog in August 2012. Almost eight years. A few years ago, I explored some of my earlier blogs in an effort to tally the number of posts I had written at … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Love Letters
I tend to keep personal letters I receive in the mail, whether handwritten or typewritten. Maybe my practice is driven by their rarity. Or perhaps they offer evidence someone thought I was worth the time and energy required to write … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Just Thinking, Philosophy
2 Comments
Contemplating Commerce
I think there’s a continuum of economic commerce that ranges from offering neighbors a needed cup of sugar to unflinchingly demanding a pound of flesh before even a grain of the sweet stuff is released. Maybe the spectrum is even … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Healing
To heal. To me, the term conjures a string of related words and a host of related thoughts behind them. Healing leaves scars from wounds. Those wounds and their consequent scars may be physical or emotional or a combination. Whether … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Dimensions
I tell myself I am not superstitious. I say I dismiss the concept that coincidences have “meaning.” There is absolutely no reason to believe that, when I think about a person with enough focus, enough intensity, that person will reciprocate … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas, Intellect, Philosophy
Leave a comment
Conjecture
My mind wandered deep into my past this morning, suddenly and for no apparent reason. In my mind’s eye, I saw images of items I probably last saw when I was a very young child. I remembered tiny replicas of … Continue reading
Posted in Covid-19, Memories, Mexico
Leave a comment
Struggles (AR) in the Times of Pestilence
The fictional town of Stuggles, Arkansas morphed from a small town coping with abandonment by its principal employer, a manufacturing plant, into a community on life support, thanks to a virus for which no immunity nor any treatment exists. The … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, Writing
3 Comments
What I am Learning, Even Today, from Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath. I remember (though indistinctly, as if through a heavy fog) reading Steinbeck’s classic novel depicting the struggles of Depression-era Dust Bowl migrations. What I remember clearly about the story, though, is the intensity of Jim Casy’s … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy
2 Comments
Solutions Already Exist
Solutions to the problems we are facing exist, already, in our heads. We just need to find ways to mine for them and process raw ideas into finished, implementable processes that yield results. Creativity blossoms when monstrous challenges confront us. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Speculation and Organization
The threats posed by the coronavirus have changed my life, thus far, in only limited ways. The seismic shifts taking place throughout the rest of the world have begun here, but I spend most of my time at home, anyway, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
1 Comment
A Lone
I sometimes reflect on my life thus far as if it were a single event playing out across a spectrum of time. That viewpoint allows me to contemplate the experience from an unusual perspective; as if I were watching it … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Life in the Times of Pestilence
We have no weapons to fight this war. Our only realistic hope is to hide from the enemy; play dead and hope the beast does not call our bluff. If we confront him, face to face, the best we can … Continue reading
I’m Not Going to Work Today
On Labor Day several years ago, my wife and I listened to the Glenn Mitchell Show as we drove around Dallas. I was enthralled by Mitchell’s talk show, especially his “Anything You Ever Wanted to Know” segment; the tag line … Continue reading
Posted in Covid-19, Memories, Music
2 Comments
Fear and Dark Humor and Complete Disorientation
Fear drives both rational and irrational behaviors. In times of chaos, we find differentiation between them increasingly difficult. For example, are consumers rational when they stock up on toilet paper and non-perishable foodstuffs? It depends on perspective. If information available … Continue reading
Posted in Covid-19, Uncategorized
4 Comments
Facts, Bias, and Slant
Media bias is real. Yes, there are fake news sites. But the “main stream media,” a term right-wing near-nazis (note I did not call them neo-nazis) does not, by and large, conform to my definition of the propagators of fake … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Restlessly Waiting
Avocado toast and bacon improved my state of mind yesterday morning. Lunch yesterday helped, too. We had leftover (from the night before) cioppino. My wife found a recipe that married the Italian-American dish to Korean flavors (the latter courtesy of … Continue reading
Posted in Covid-19, Health
Leave a comment
Confronting Two Enemies
In the wake of a growing concern about a mysterious disease, when will a gnawing worry evolve into fear? What incident will cause fear to mushroom into terror, breeding deep suspicion of anyone outside our immediate circle? At what point … Continue reading
Posted in Covid-19, Depression, Health, Hope, Philosophy
Leave a comment
Love is the Richest Emotion
I love you. You know who you are. I could listen to your voice for hours if you’d let me. And I suppose you would. But what reason could I give for wanting to hear it? What excuse could I … Continue reading
Posted in Love, Writing
Leave a comment