When I return to these words,
there is a pull to make them conclude.

Conclusion is a noun.
Does that make it a thing?
Have you ever held one in your hand?

We are graspers.
It’s the thumbs, they say.

We don’t see objects,
we see what they’re for.
The brain moves ahead,
mapping how things will fit in the hand.

Held.
Where to go, what to do.

I’ve never held a conclusion.
But I know the feeling.

Certainty.
A kind of endorphin.
Chest lifts.
Feet ground.
Hands ready.

Or softer:
sit back.

Curiosity fades.
Nothing left to reach for
when something is known.

Conclusion does the holding.

So I want to conclude.
Who doesn’t want to know
what all this is?

To settle.

Life is a noun.
So am I.
But I won’t.

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

—

Related Reading

The Chisel and The Level
Precision appears when the one shaping the words softens.

Standing On A Stool
A position forms. Then something loosens.

The Place I Run To
Open, then narrowing. The move back to safety.

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The other morning,
this.

Sitting outside,
coffee in hand.

A boy, maybe five,
walks past.

He is play,
entranced,
free, whole.

His open face looks up,
catches my eye.

Freezes.

He narrows.
Runs back to his mother.

Caught.

One becomes two.
Safety.

Mind takes a snapshot.
Remember this.

—

Writing this now,
the boy returns.

Connection,
in a flash.

I do it too.

Myself,
open, then freezing, returning.

Not to another person,
but to my head.

To narrowness.

As if the world,
and my body in it,
are too much.

Too large, too wild, too open.

I run back.

Safety,
this narrowed center.

The world.
And me, looking out.

—

Sometimes
there is venturing.

Moments,
unthought, here and there.

The warmth of water
running down the back.

The full taste
and texture
of food in the mouth.

Not listening to birds,
but becoming hearing itself.

—

Then
caught,
frozen,

I run back.

—

To my head.

The narrow place.

Not unseen,
just small enough
to stand apart again.

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

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• The Circling Forms a Center — Sometimes the creek disappears.

• A Loop About A Loop — A question interrupts.

• The Chisel and the Level — Two pages in, the “I” disappeared.

After a storm, I walk beside the creek.

The new swell of water transforms. Submerging banks. Brown-white currents rushing. Louder now. Even the bridges look lower.

Most enchanting is how the water carries whatever it has snatched from upstream — colorful wrappers, sticks and leaves riding the current. Once, a plastic stool. Another time a pink stroller. Someone’s garbage bin. A beach ball on its way to the ocean.

Becoming fascination itself, I walk.
A kid again. Wonder.

Right now an orange pail hangs by its handle from a tree branch.

An odd ornament.
The remainder of the storm.

Eyes widen at the brightness.

Some days I hardly notice the creek.

Those are the days my head is full of its own weather.

There was a morning, just after waking, when I noticed something curious.

If experience flows like a creek, mine was flowing unusually easy.

Perched inside myself, I watched for a while. Perspective panoramic. The moment’s ingredients — sensing, thinking, feeling, meaning — coming and going.

Nothing caught for long. No obvious center to grab onto.

Just hmmm, there is this.
And hmmm, now this.

When the creek floods, I never think it should be some other way.

Debris — the evidence of us.

A different morning I wake up and there it is.

The old, familiar anvil in the center of my chest.

Everything narrows around it. The center thickens. Ache and uncertainty lodge there like the garbage bin — waterlogged, mud-packed, stuck.

Thought rushes brown — up, over, around.

There is only this.

That easy morning stopped flowing with a single thought.

An afternoon conversation. A face I couldn’t read.

The ache of not feeling understood.
Words replaying, taking over.

A flick of hot embarrassment — the signal that sticks.

The thought loops a dozen times.

Perhaps it isn’t thought that slows a creek.

It’s the circling.

Mostly, Sand Creek meanders thin. Its surface quiet, like a mirror with nothing to say about its reflection.

I walked it recently on that kind of day and noticed I barely saw the creek for all the chatter circling in my head.

Until something orange caught my eye.

A small bucket hanging by its white handle from a low branch.

An odd ornament.

The creek, again.

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

Related Reading

If this piece resonated, you might also like:

• A Loop About A Loop — A question interrupts.
• Off The Tree — A steady succession of I’s.
• The Horizon Keeps Rearranging — We never quite reach the horizon.

I write short essays from inside ordinary life—
moments where something shifts—
and an “I” forms or loosens.

These pieces don’t explain or resolve.
They look closely.

If you’d like a place to begin, start here:

A Loop About A Loop
A question turns, then turns again.

The Circling Forms a Center
Walking beside a creek. Attention shifts. The scene changes with it.

Standing on a Stool
In the middle of conflict, something loosens.

Off The Tree
A steady succession of I’s.

The Horizon Keeps Rearranging
We never quite reach the horizon.

If something here stays with you,

you can subscribe.

I publish once a week.

Subscribe now

What’s forming now?

Sometimes it’s too crowded to see.
Sometimes its movement, clear.

A ferris wheel dropping off new characters every time it reaches the bottom.

The One Who Seeks.
The One Who Made This Dinner.
The One Who Must Fix Silence with Conversation.

I read the following exchange:

Monk: What happens when the leaves are falling and the trees are bare?
Unmon: The golden wind, revealed!

I lean forward.

Without a word—
I know that tree.
I’ve seen this wind take the leaves.

Then—the crowd begins to speak.

I should write something.
Hurry, get it down.
This is good, it will lead somewhere.
I understand what it means.

Each a leaf.

Falling. Joining colored wind.

If there is an exit from this, I haven’t found it.

The realization aches.

Seeker.
Writer.
The One Who Needs Fixing.

A steady succession of I’s.

Golden.

What’s forming now.

The exchange is a Zen koan attributed to Yunmen (Unmon).

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

Related Reading

If this piece resonated, you might also like:

• A Loop About A Loop — A question interrupts.
• The Circling Forms a Center — Some days the creek disappears.
• The Chisel and the Level — Two pages in, the “I” disappeared.

I wonder if this is what it’s like to be in a duel.

We stood across from each other in the basement, each front-facing. Each trying to be a little taller. Eyes narrowed, scanning for vulnerable places.

The place I stood was named: Mom.
Firm. Leveraged. A point to make. The push of responsibility at my back.
The words I spoke came from there.

Then, a small internal shift. I don’t know why.

First, a split second of fear — like stepping onto a lower-than-expected stair.

Instead of falling, vision widened. The whole scene came into focus.

I stopped telling and began taking her in. Listening. Waiting. Only then responding.

The weapon loosened in my hand. Words stopped trying to prove.

Nothing resolved.

Walking upstairs, I realized something more valuable had happened.

I hadn’t missed her.

—

This time, the kitchen.

A hurt unnamed. The impulse to place it squarely on his shoulders.

Different room. Same duel-stance. Another name: Wife.

Words forming to secure my position.

Then again — a small shift. Fear. Widening.

Listening took the lead. Speech followed when it was my turn.

No score kept. No verdict delivered.

Just two people saying what was true.

Closer somehow — not because we agreed.

—

Sometimes I recognize when a position is being used like a stool.

Mom. Wife. The one who knows. The one who is aggrieved.

There’s a feeling to it — effort. The scramble for footing.

Without height, the world insists, we lose control.

But when footing is allowed to give way, something curious happens.

A split second of fear — as if stepping somewhere unfamiliar.

Then dilation. The eyes adjust.

Ah. Familiar ground.

What’s foreign is entering it without force.

Attention widens. Listening sharpens. Speech aligns. Distance begins to close.

No one monopolizing the exchange. Yet nothing unraveling.

I wonder how much of what I once called advantage
was only the precarious footing of a stool —
when life may have arranged itself all along.

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

Related Reading

If this piece resonated, you might also like:

• The Horizon Keeps Rearranging — We never quite reach the horizon.
• A Loop About A Loop — A question interrupts.
• The Circling Forms a Center — Some days the creek disappears.

Two pages into a notebook, the “I” disappeared.
That firm center of experience dissolved.
The Writer — the one demanding sentences shape into a result — exited.

Writing continued.
Pen-as-chisel stopped trying to make something happen.
In its place, a small level.
To place gently against experience.

The bubble centers. Or it doesn’t.
I met precision when myself left.

For months, in the same notebook, I keep tripping over the word “I.”
I. Me. Myself. My self. My Self.

English requires a subject.
Experience doesn’t always have one. I don’t know what to call it when it doesn’t.

I won’t claim there is no self.

Some days the Writer is there, solidified, leaning forward, gripping the chisel, shaping the sentence.
Less and less though.
This is how the system regulates right now.

But sometimes it all eases.
Chisel-grip loosens.
Level rests cleanly against experience.
If the words are precise, the bubble settles.

Press publish and reliably the controlling Writer wakes.
Chest tightens.
Thought: better with the chisel?

Level sits quietly on the desk.

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

Related Reading

If this piece resonated, you might also like:

• Off The Tree — A steady succession of I’s.
• A Loop About A Loop — A question interrupts.
• Permission — I thought I needed permission to write.

We’d walk, talk.

A pattern taking shape through young questions asked on city sidewalks, lamplit streets, paths through parks. Love, it seemed, was giving each other our best answers.

By our third house we started walking to the lake. That’s when it changed. We’d choose a bench, watch the water pointlessly shift with the wind. He noticed how tired I was. I noticed him strained. The questions were harder to shape, the answers no longer satisfying.

We had arrived. Small classic Georgian Colonial. Safe and leafy, geometric neighborhood. Healthy kids. Success in business. That bench held the weight of what couldn’t be ignored. The water never once told us how.

We never quite reach the horizon. Recently we drove from the Appalachian Mountains through Georgia Piedmont to the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The horizon kept rearranging itself.

There is a stretch before the coast. It’s flat, pine-forested, dotted by lonely marshes. That day winter-brown, scrubby. Here the horizon gapes. Wide, harsh, uncomfortably empty of people.

Then, Savannah — alive, inhabited, unexpected.

The house went. In a single day we sold its contents, leaving one box for the thrift store. Then we traveled for a long while, zigzagging a way as we went. A new pattern emerged, uncomfortable, annoying at first. We’d walk, talk. A question. Then only: we’ll see.

Returning from Savannah, the land shifts back. It begins flat. Marshes give way to pine, pine to red clay, red clay to where our life is now. The horizon keeps rearranging.

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

Related reading

If this piece resonated, you might also like:

• Standing on a Stool — In the middle of conflict, something loosens.
• A Loop About A Loop — A question interrupts.
• Permission — I thought I needed permission to write.

Griddle heats. Teapot warms. Hands at the cutting board move faster than thought.
Refrigerator. Eggs. Milk.
Two steps left for vanilla.
Back to the counter. Eggs crack. Wet into dry. Whisk moving.
Nose catches the bacon. Knows doneness without looking.
Teapot restless.

Eggs ready. Bacon crisp. Oranges sliced. Pancakes gold.
Four plates on the table.

Ready. There.

Wait. I can’t find the one who made it.

A question interrupts.

Was I here?

For a second my feet have nowhere to stand.

I pour hot water into a mug. Almost spill.

If I wasn’t there, what holds this together?

I count four napkins.
One. Two. Three…

Where was I?

Four.

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

Related reading

If this piece resonated, you might also like:

• The Circling Forms a Center — Some days the creek disappears.
• Off The Tree — A steady succession of I’s.
• The Chisel and the Level — Two pages in, the “I” disappeared.

For ten years, I didn’t write publicly.

I found other things to do. Groceries to buy. Meals to make. Laundry to clean. Crumbs to sweep. Walks to take. Other people’s books to read.

But the desire never left. It followed me everywhere.

So did fear. It liked asking questions that undermined what I wanted:

Is my writing good enough?
Are the ideas I have interesting?
Is my voice distinct?

And always the sharpest one:
What could I possibly know that’s worth saying?

I filled countless notebooks, never thinking what I wrote was distinct or special. Thoughts sparked by books I’d read, small ideas, questions — they seemed far too ordinary for anyone else’s interest.

I kept asking: What do I know? Fully formed understanding felt necessary before I could begin.

Then I came across an idea:

A river isn’t special.

As soon as I saw it, I recognized my mistake. It was obvious — so obvious I laughed.

A river doesn’t seek permission to flow. It moves because it is conditions.

I had made a category error.

I had placed writing in the solid category of performance — and performance requires permission. But writing doesn’t belong there. It belongs in the category of movement.

The moment that landed in my body, I could breathe. My shoulders softened. My head cleared. Ten years of pressure released.

Fear revealed itself as distortion.

The gravitational center of writing — what I had been pressurizing as author, controller of words, performer — dropped. I could move.

It wasn’t confidence. It was re-situation.

Then it clicked: I had already known this.

I’ve seen how words come when I write. I don’t generate them. They arrive.

When I’m in a notebook, I don’t know the next sentence — sometimes not even the next word — until I write the one in front of me. Words don’t come by permission. They move when allowed.

A bird calling outside my window.
The way light shifts across my desk.
The feeling of coordination in my body while making a meal.

Words, notebook, and desire are to writing what gravity, volume, and sediment are to rivers.

Writing isn’t an act of understanding. It’s observation and documentation of conditions in word form.

When they move, they take shape.

And if there is an “I” in it at all, its only claim is responsible participant. Another condition.

Now I write.

—

If you’d like to read as new pieces arrive, you can subscribe.

Related Reading

If this piece resonated, you might also like:

• The Chisel and the Level — Two pages in, the “I” disappeared.
• The Horizon Keeps Rearranging — We never quite reach the horizon.
• A Loop About A Loop — A question interrupts.