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My cardiologist said I need at least 20 minutes a day of aerobic exercise daily. I’m reluctant to be one of those power walkers ’cause they “look so stupid,” I thought before reminding my mind, “we don’t say shit like that anymore.” Since my brush with death, I catch it revving and its been lot…

“I would drop it if I could,” he screamed like a bald Rapunzel in a prison tower. “That’s her story, not mine!”  His story was about a boy who was born into a family where something was always wrong. Growing up where nothing was ever just right taught him he wasn’t either and nothing else…

“Get me the fuck off this magic wand,” I thought before I woke up, gyrating on a broomstick to a country song, wondering if wearing a different pair of jeans might make my message more universal.  Despite being a lifelong cynic, people tell me what a pleasure I am to know. At this point, even…

I had my first heart attack twenty years ago. I smoked back then and the first thing I did after getting five stents was grab a Marlboro Light. I reluctantly quit soon after for obvious reasons, but rather than embracing my new lease on life, subliminal gloom returned. Mortality swooped interestingly close which was oddly…

Neither of my parents had a sense of humor. Whenever I said that, they disagreed as they did with most of my opinions. They would’ve preferred hearing how appreciative I was to be raised at all, but like Frankenstein’s monster, the shred of self-preservation which kept me ungrateful, also prevented me from flinging myself headfirst…

I’d been struggling on and off with an invasive weed in our front beds called Torpedo grass, so I Googled for a solution on the internet. Amid the extreme suggestions and harsh chemicals, I had to do something, but what? Attending to anything especially these days, has always been a bit like reading tea leaves…

I lay on an examination table using a Bic lighter to ignite the white sheet I’d covered myself with, then quickly lay back down. The fire licking my ankles felt like a warm foot bath and when the flames dripped to the floor, the gasoline I’d apparently poured there, ignited far more gently than I…

Once upon a time in early June, a miserable man hiking alone in some remote woods happened upon the same small, cleared valley he’d often found in his dreams. At the base of the valley was a small swimming pond where picknickers and bathers enjoyed glorious Saturdays. The weather was always so perfect, even the…

Last winter’s freeze in Texas led to shutting down chemical plants that produce resin for fiberglass swimming pools, which led me to no longer selling them, which led me to non-stop writing 130 pages of a bleak memoir, which led me to quit writing it, which led me to searching for light, which led me…

Thanks again for all your lovely birthday wishes yesterday. Resting upon my sixty sixth milestone in a recycled party hat in a clump of invasive bamboo, I can’t pretend to be fond of birthdays. I was one of those kids who spent them alone in my room or drunk in the woods, so now if…