Category Archives: Travel

travelogues, essays, journals

Scottish Sonnets

  These sonnets were written during a trip I took from the Yorkshire Dales to Edinburgh with my friend Pat Maples in June of 2009. A few more were finished in July in the South Mountain in Pennsylvania. These sonnets are for Pat Maples. Enjoy […]

From Notebooks Kept, 1973 – 1974

  Festina lente.Hurry slowly. Canta y no llores.Sing and don’t cry.     on leaving   The weary earth, the weary sky each weary creature will stop what they do to watch me return, kiss you, embrace holding your face, heart like a bowl ready […]

Smell Bad Tofu

… I am going to include an entry from a journal I kept in Wuhan in 2006 about eating Smell Bad Tofu for the first time. This entry was one of the first on my blog when I began it in 2010 though it only […]

1973 – 1974

… … on leaving The weary earth, the weary sky each weary creature will stop what they do to watch me return, kiss you, embrace holding your face, heart like a bowl ready to be filled ready to fill. … on painting ……“Painting isn’t filling […]

The Quiet Pond

… The quiet pond wrote a V when the water spider skidded forth, a V here, V there, the same V that geese make flying south. When a swallow swooped for a quick nip or a bass rose with its wide mouth, an O spread […]

Rain: NYC, December 9, 2014

… It’s raining, it’s pouring. Mayor de Blasio must be happy it isn’t as cold as yesterday because then there would be one heck of a blizzard with everyone complaining it wasn’t being plowed fast enough. On the M9 coming home, the windows were so […]

Early November at My Father’s Pond

… I grew up on the property where this pond is now. The pond didn’t used to be there. It was a swamp of springs that produced one mighty stream. My father in the early 70s bulldozed the swamp and made a dam, a beautiful […]

A Good Day in October

… Here it is Sunday already. I am posting some photos from Friday. We left early enough, Akram and I, so that even though I forgot my MOMA membership card, there was time to go back and still have breakfast before we went to see […]

September in the South Mountain

… Here hopefully are some pictures that are worth a thousand words, anyway a walk in the woods, a stop by the pond, reflections for awhile of the passing clouds. … … … … … … … … … …

from Where the Heart Is

When I was a chef years ago, a Pakistani dishwasher told me I was the only nice Christian he’d ever met and when I died Allah was going to send me to the nicest part of hell, which is where you are allowed to lift […]

Guatemala Notebooks

… Guatemala Notebooks or Trying to Understand Something for Pat who asked me when he left to keep this journal in his stead The same symbols keep repeating themselves. … December 9, 1990— I got you into the cab by ten and you were off […]

In my words, July 8 – 14

……… It has just begun to rain, freshening the remains of the day. Cachito was glad to see me when I came home. I threw his toy mouse and he ran batting it down the hall, grabbing it in his jaws, bringing it back for […]