Ah Medium, you are such a fickle lover
Mysterious Medium, I am never going to figure you out, but I’m still trying. It is estimated that there are more than 50 million monthly visitors to Medium — and yet it is an ongoing effort to try to get a wider read for the pieces I write. I know I am not alone. Here is my April roundup:
1.) A Pop Quiz for Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month
This is a piece on The Haven that was particularly meaningful for me as someone with an autoimmune disease. Thirty-one people read it with an 86 percent response rate which is something I rarely achieve. Then, it didn’t get curated and…
It’s my inner life only that *might* make a good reality show
Although I truly enjoy reading other people’s profiles here, I have procrastinated endlessly about writing my own. I wonder if it’s like trying to come up with a dating profile when you are literally interested in hanging out with anyone and everyone. Maybe not, but here goes nothing —
The non-reality show material:
I grew up in Tennessee, went to college in Virginia, came back to Tennessee for my first job and then, rather randomly, ended up in Southeast Texas. I do, however, love Texas and don’t see leaving anytime soon. My blood has thinned, I’m a wimp about cold…
It’s a battle Earl is going to lose sooner or later
It was the last one. The precious. The beloved.
The rust-colored nub that sat to the left of center in Earl’s mouth.
He wore dentures sure, but they fit snugly over the tooth. A kind of shield as it were.
Earl didn’t know why he cared about the loss of this particular canine, but he did. It had been in his mouth for decades and when it went, there would be no others.
Just like his hair.
So it was a real dilemma then that presented itself during Friday movie night at Shady Acres Senior Living.
They were watching Cocoon…
Are you the perpetrator? Or the victim?
This could be a crime scene
where you are both the perpetrator and the victim.
Your feet in stirrups,
the urge to curse like blood on the tongue.
Maybe it really is blood on your tongue.
There are fluids everywhere.
You are awash in emotion.
And if your partner says
one more word
there will be blood on his tongue too.
It seems they all think you lack the will to complete the act.
When you are nothing but gritted teeth and slick skin and pain so bright there is nothing you wouldn’t do to snuff it out.
The last…
For the tortoise and the hare
Rabbit ready
Red Bull
Revved up
The arrow
before the
release
Meanwhile…
the turtle is taking his own sweet time with some tasty mushrooms and turmeric tea before he ties his shoes and turns to his opponent to tip his toffee-colored cap.
“Good luck to — ”
POP
Rabbit races
Road rage
Running hard
The ball
before it
hits
the wall
Meanwhile…
the turtle is transfixed by the way the sunlight filters through the trees so that he almost trips over the resting rabbit before he tips his toffee-colored cap and traipses around his torso.
“Slow and steady — sucker.”
Noah’s granddad, Methuselah, missed the great flood by one week
The ark is finished. For the last 100 years, I have watched Noah build it. For a time, I helped harvest the gopher wood, helped shape it, and frame it to make the great boat.
When I could work no longer, they made me a mat of reeds to sit upon. It was pleasant to watch Noah and Sham and Ham and Japheth heft and bind the planes of wood. When I was not weary, I joined in their singing and in their praise.
Like tonight, after they made the fire and roasted the goat. They rejoice because they are…
It’s more frenzy than spite, but will the need for travel really blow numbers out of the water this summer?
I first heard the term “Revenge Travel” this week, as CBS Sunday Morning did a segment on the anticipated travel boom this summer. National Geographic contributor Heather Greenwood Davis defined the phrase for CBS.
“‘Revenge travel’ is the idea that, after a year of being at home, people are gonna get back at the pandemic, and actually get out there and live their best lives while traveling,” she said.
She told the network about the “gray wave” of vaccinated seniors 65+ cranking up their travel plans and anticipates the same wave for younger adults.
I don’t dispute her, but I…
The cupbearer won freedom, the baker got death
I did not need the Hebrew to tell me the importance of dreams. As a boy, I opened my eyes in sleep to walk along the Nile. There were no boats and no fishermen, no women who had come to draw water. I was alone except for a crocodile that lay in the shallows.
It stared at me, yet was so still I wondered if it was awake. While I watched, a hippopotamus rose silently from the deeper water. The fight that followed, loud and terrible, left the crocodile in pieces. …
It isn’t quite what Maeve had in mind
The boy is sitting cross-legged on the sheepskin rug eating dry cereal out of a bowl. Maeve had bought him a navy poplin pajama set but he has managed to wiggle out of the bottoms. He is wearing pull-ups — the need for them a small surprise in the big scheme of things — and the way he keeps squirming around makes Maeve nervous.
“Archie?” When he doesn’t answer — “Archie. Do you need to go to the loo?”
He turns to look at her and smiles, his big brown eyes bright with excitement behind his headset. The program he…
‘To sleep, perchance to dream’
To run the gauntlet,
to escape the cubicle maze,
to duck and weave to evade the gaze that makes one last request.
And then to rest.
I understand that rest was the goal, the safe space, the nest.
But what if I told you there is danger in respite, the soft place, the breast.
For when you sit or lie or otherwise stop there is no limit to how far you might drop.
The abdication of the sensate world,
the sinking down into velvet,
a flower unfurled.
Have you considered that the rabbit hole might be endless? …
