On knowing our fate and living it up anyway — It’s funny how death dances beside us from our first breath until our last gasp. When I think about death, it’s not symbolic deaths and renewals that grip my spirit, though they are plentiful. The death of my parents’ marriage. The death of my maiden name. The death of myself…

Bloody blackberry summer — The egg carton balanced precariously on the corner. Three eggs would be sufficient for tomorrow’s breakfast. George Ralph the Second sharpened a kitchen knife and began methodically chopping green onions and mincing garlic. The carton was full when George retrieved it from the fridge. The expiry date read May 22…

A memoir on birth, fear, and love — CW: suicide attempt ~ When I was four or five or seven, someone took me to the Stovall History Museum in Norman. On proud display, in the foyer, a bronze bust — a man’s realistic head with bullets eating holes into it. I recoiled in terror. Body-shuddering terror. …

Smitten with the season — Have you ever felt a cool breeze wrap around your body, a relief from the sticky, never-ending summer? Have you noticed as summer leaves morph from greens to rusty browns, oranges, reds, and yellows? Have you seen a hillside changed from a summer painting to an autumn one? Have you…

Sweating summer revelations — August/September 2023 In the deep, blustery pit of winter and ice cream headaches brought on by the season’s vicious and biting wind, we dream of warmer days ahead. …

Memoirs have been begging to leave my bones for decades. In the summer of 2021, after conversations with my loved ones, after I’d let the oldest memories begin to simmer and stew and bubble up, I began reading memoir again. And, on a summer day, in 2021, I continued my…

This summer commemorates the 35th anniversary of the movie Big — What if when you were 12 you made a wish to be all grown up and it actually happened? That’s the premise of the hilarious 1988 film Big directed by Penny Marshall and starring Tom Hanks acting as a 12 year old in a 30 year old man’s body. If…

On time travel books and stories + nature love — Greetings Creativity Fiends, Thank you for allowing me to grow and explore how I’ll utilize Substack with you — you are the reason I’m here. Artists and creatives often feel weird, different, outcasts. Most of us eventually embrace our otherness as a positive trait. I’d say a lot of us…

A Commentary On Modern Times — dripping sweat, mascara-stained faces under axed ghost limbs protestors melting in sweltering Cali sun. The laborers denied water breaks. The sun high and the heat mailbox-bread-baking-in-under-an-hour hot. summer in Texas hot. Sizzle drop splat an egg on the sidewalk AI please stand up; will the real AI please stand up? …