My wife’s garden invites color and song to the railing of our front porch. It perches there, looks around, listening to the weird little man ticking away on his keyboard, just on the other side of the pane. Then another comes– some kind of finch. Their songs together get louder, a piercing piccolo trill with …
Author Archives: the.primes
For My Wife
I’m different when she’s gone. When she’s here, there’s more hustle in me, knowing she’s in the other room, studying for a test she needs to take for work. When she’s here, I’m smiling under the covers, anticipating the first words from her mouth, “C’mon, let’s go for a walk.” When I come back, I …
New Privilege , #2000
When my friend tells me about her job, and all the talking everybody does, and how relational it is, and how there’s so much drama, I made a quick diagnosis without her permission. It was simple to see. They all hate their work. Their tasks are so meaningless to them that they’d rather gossip and …
The New Luxury
Is having nothing to believe in, no purpose in life other than to loud the day away on whatever’s new , whatever’s contagious and whatever’s momentary. All the trends happen so fast. The whiplash chaos dizzies us into traumas so deep and varied that we want distance from ourselves. Our faded moral fabric has a …
retreat
I’m at my Catholic Retreat with my friends, on the cusp of our confirmation. This is likely ’88 or ’89. There’s no warnings here. No agendas. I’m talking to John, or somebody else, and the lights go off. It stays this way for a good 15-30 seconds– enough time to cause anticipation and a little …
Walks
A good Sunday. Washed the cars. Smoked a chicken in the Masterbilt. Took things to the Goodwill and had an encounter with the most polite man in the world. Then I installed an irrigation system so that my wife and I can use our evenings more productively. As to why we hadn’t thought of this …
Unburying a few notes in my Microsoft OneNote files, I’m like a college kid in a second hand clothing store– touching, feeling and interpreting all the material and surprised they fit and feel pretty good. Not designer, second hand Gucci– but it’s at least 2nd hand Banana Republic. Some of the work I’m completing now …
Archive
Local Library: Walking with my aunt in our hometown, our legs weary and the cold wind is far more frigid than what we’re used too . Most of our conversation is about growing up, and the imminent death of her mother, my grandmother. Wandering into the local library to warm up, we come upon a …
Work Trip
In Dallas, on a work trip, during a month long reset for my body. A few years ago, I traveled almost 50% of the time– Nashville, Milwaukee, San Jose, and DC. During that time, I noticed how hotel rooms had the power to increase the intensity of hunger, in all its positive and negative forms. …
Saturday
The day is complete, but very little was completed. I outlined 4 seasons of Queen of Wilmer County, but only after drafting a very jumbled pilot over several months. Writing tv scripts is different than writing and drafting fiction– at least for me. Seeing the season as a whole unit helps add complexity to the …