Category Archives: writing

the unfinished classics of..

i love to write.. i really do. my problem is, though, that i rarely complete what i start writing. tonight, i went and fished out my paper journals from the back of my car. if you’ve seen my car, you know that they were buried under sleeping bags, climbing equipment, rubber boots, a few shirts, a propane heater, a telescoping light changer converted for climbing purproses, and a legion of other random bits of my life.

perhaps the next book purchase it’s interesting flipping through here. none of the notes are dated and they’re in no particular order: i’d usually open to whatever page fit my fancy and start penning away. i don’t know in what context most of them were written, what state of mind, what state of heart. howfun.. strange, incomplete snapshots of a developing character..

below are bits of those bits.. left in their full incompleteness for historical completeness.. :-p

i make no claims to quality. names have been chopped to protect the innocent.


mrs. m–,
i’ve started at least a half dozen letters to you. hopefully this will be the first i’ve actually finished..


anything worth writing..why is it we search so hard for purpose but we often feel happiest when pursuing no purpose – silliness.
everyone hates the auto shop. there’s something oddly intimate about it but universally embaressing.
she put her head down and cried softly.


mrs. m–,
if only i could capture the past couple years of my life and send them to you in a hand-written letter, how you would laugh, how you would comment on my silliness and dramatics, how you would smile and shake your head and go back to grading papers as you so often did on those hallway steps. honestly, i miss those times and the perspective they provided me. i need those times here and again when i get too worked up or too worried or take myself too seriously to remember that i’m just a kid, a kid too backward to go forward.


shifting gears in a faded blue mazda, ana [note: this was long before “stranger than fiction”]


silent and stirring, the nameless, shameless girl from the road slept in the back room of “grace’s landing gas stop.”


this february past, with the promise of spring in mind but the weight of winter on hand, i sat hugging a mug of coffee || the winter sun crashed and cracked down the naked branches of a formerly dignified oak.


i want.. to know her name..


she loved skirts that tickled the tops of her toes and danced like the waves at the slightest breeze.


the rain brought her down, she couldn’t lie.. and by the looks of detached concern on the faces of the strangers passing her on the swamped sidewalk she could tell she wasn’t hiding her dreariness too well. the mist gathered on her cheecks and saved her the trouble of actually crying; these collected, polluted tears seemed more fitting to her. she was a sad creature to see. arms crossed, fleece damp, eyes red, brown hair dripping, jeans clinging to her thighs, head hung low in her high coat collar.


she sat quietly, patiently on the steps, hands in her lap, white dress falling over her knees down onto her milky shins. her long blonde hair dropped behind her shoulders and framed her..

oldie but a goodiehe fondled the keys to the car and stood chilled looking back at the dark red door of the house he just left. white shirt, black pants, a tie and fleece hat. but nothing would keep him warm at four a.m. this friday morning in november. not so long as he stood quiet and alone outside on the dark side of that red vault door, though he wanted nothing more than to..


i can tell i would have no idea what i would be getting myself into with you. the drum beat of heart beat, you look familiar and i know that, for me, you’re less yourself than you are a colorful collection of pictured memories. i’ve made you into something else. and i’m happy you’re leaving now..


the real irony of his life was that, for being a materialist, he didn’t care a bit about the things he owned. if he had paid attention or was intelligent enough (in an original sense, not “high test score, i can spew facts for hours” sense) he would see how plainly he loved the idea of all his materialism. the care and house and suit and “taste” all brought him, he mistakenly though, respect and admiration. our dear yuppie, despite his attention to financial security, was bankrupt of personal security.


ahh.. the good dog and his writing..tangerine haze of the sierra nevadas tempers to taxi cab yellow and finally to shades of blue that even crayola couldn’t capture. birds of steal feathers shake the air and the ground beneath my nomadic feet. the hustle and bustle, the smoke and smog, the clammer and clatter that is LAX serves as staging ground for my innocence lost.


skipping class has become the norm. i woke up around 10:30a, showered, and went to the opc to meet with kp and cr about fly fishing. afterwords, we shopped for the climbing trip and attempted to get the motor pool van but couldn’t: we had it reserved only for friday at noon. that was followed by organizing fastpacks with k and g, a meeting with d (save me now before the trip is canceled all together), and then hanging out at the climbing with km and j.


word is m will be coming here next year. that should be interesting. i feel, though, that i will do my best to leave her to find her own place here. that’s extremely important, for the both of us


i left because i couldn’t stay.

stirrings of the mostly dead

office zombieat the job i had before my current position, it’s pretty safe to say that i wasn’t happy there. i spent five months there and i ended up making an almost daily habit of sending out some depressing or dejected email to a group of loyal readers. i’ve been meaning to and have finally collected them into a memoir of sorts.

(don’t) enjoy 😉

download it here:

stirrings of the mostly dead