No no don’t worry. I’m not talking about blocking users here (least of all you; you’re my favorite). No, I’m using the word in a much older context, referring to a dread phenomenon bitched about by some writers, and existentially denied by others. Those others, a convincing lot, will tell you that a writer doesn’t get blocked, a writer gets lazy.
Perhaps. And perhaps laziness metastasizes into paralysis. Seems like the result is the same.
No matter—no definitive diagnosis is needed. And I didn’t come here to bitch about it, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. I’m telling myself that I’m merely reporting on events.
And they’ve been…uneventful, as far as writing goes, for me. Words in written form seem to be in short supply. Not much blogging, not much freelancing, not much work done either on those prose-and-poetry projects that I keep in long-lived and little pecked-at files, that are as full as guilt as they are words as long as I’m not pecking at them.
But what the hell. Blocks and laziness need not be forever. Already I’m at word 183 of this little blog post. That’s not nothing. And last night in the wee hours (because on the weekend, wee are the hours I keep), I wrote a little bit in my guiltiest file, the novel I want to finish the most, the story I’m most enjoying unraveling. I didn’t write much: two paragraphs. That’s nothing, practically, in the context of a novel. That’s a ten or twenty year novel rate, that is.
But here’s the thing: I like those two paragraphs. I’m well pleased with them. That is something, something fine.
And that’s the way, I think—along with a few words spilled in posts like these (closing in on 300 words now)—to break out of that rut, and to chip away at the block or the laziness, or whatever it is, or whatever it isn’t.
Dial it in and don’t overthink it. There are two states of being: writing and not-writing. I can’t write all the time. I can however not-write all the time, if I chose or if I allowed. I do not.
Okay, so maybe you’re not a card-carrying member of the One Big Union—AKA The Wobblies (legend sources the nickname to the IWW’s international outreach: a non-English speaking member tried
to pronounce IWW but it came out I-Wobble-Wobble).
safety and child-labor laws.
Something extraordinary is happening, ominous yet inspiring, a scant half-mile from the northern border of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, near Fort Yates, North Dakota.
distribution terminals in southern Illinois. The pipeline would cross four states, and traverse under the Missouri River.
A second objection of the Standing Rock people, no less urgent, is that construction endangers ancestral lands, burial grounds, and cultural heritage sites along the pipeline route. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which gave final permitting approval for the pipeline in July, says it completed both environmental and archaeological surveys, and accepted public comment during its deliberations prior to approval. The tribe, under legal representation by 
were ignored and that the impact surveys were cursory at best. They have filed for an injunction to halt construction of the pipeline, with U.S. District Judge James Boasburg set to issue a ruling by September 9th.
been for trespassing, which spotlights an intriguing historical point: the focal area of the protest is considered private property, under lease by the pipeline management company; however this land had previously been part of the Standing Rock reservation, and was seized without consent in 1958 for a dam project by the aforementioned Army Corps of Engineers.
security forces employed by the pipeline say they were attacked with sticks and rocks. They pepper-sprayed and unleashed guard dogs on protesters. Six people, including a child, were treated for dog bites, and more than 30 were sprayed.
Occasionally an actor passes, and it’s only after they’re gone that you realize how much they truly meant. We 
lost Gene Wilder today, and can now reflect upon his enormous and invaluable impact. From his genre-defining collaborations with Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor, to his generational classic turn as Willy Wonka, to his star-crossed marriage to Gilda Radner (can you imagine how funny they must have been together?)—which resulted in his whole-hearted advocacy for cancer awareness…in his wake we can now appreciate how many of the smiles, gut-laughs, and warm good feelings of decades past this man was responsible for. 
1991 was another year in which we saw 
A question I’m frequently asked, not always in the most patient of tones, is what becomes of the central characters, Sara and John, from my first novel, 
Plenty of attempts have been made down through the centuries to recast John Milton’s 1660s epic poem, 
Paradise Lost as an 80s-era, NES-ish console game. Satan is your player-avatar. Beelzebub is a rather pathetic NPC. God seems to be the level boss. Delta Heavy provides your soundtrack—and quite a good one.
The Fourth of July isn’t just a date, or a holiday, or a commemoration. It’s a concept, heavy with 
But one viewpoint often ignored or forgotten as we pursue our star-spangled reveries, is that the foremost Fourth, the one in 1776, was by no means an end in of itself. The document presented and signed that day brought no finality—it marked instead a most uncertain beginning. It was with sincere solemnity, and perhaps even fatalism, that the signers pledged their “Lives…Fortunes..and sacred Honor.” Years of war and privation lay ahead of them. Most of them would go to their graves not knowing if the nation they’d forged would endure, or would expire.
In the run-up to his first title fight, against Sonny Liston in 1964, Ali achieved pop-culture immortality when he promised to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” He also explained away his boasting with a simple, prophetic, and unarguable truth: “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” He beat Liston in seven rounds and became the heavyweight champion of the world.
carefully, with tremors wracking his body. His mind remained strong, he still had much to say, and far from being shamed by his condition, he seemed content to share it, for the sake of understanding.
Memorial Day, 
Two thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight (-ish) years after his death, Aristotle’s final resting place might have been found.
both a tomb and temple.
