Wolf Brigade: One decade, dead.

“Where are all the good men dead; In the heart, or in the head?”

For the few left alive that are actually good, the answer must be, neither.

If I wasn’t looking, I wouldn’t have seen; I’m never really sure if that is better or worse.

Any attentive, creative mind could write volumes (and I imagine even semi-interesting ones) about the oddity and unpredictability of the American grocery store. I can’t recall a trip in which I didn’t see something that, even on my widely-sliding scale, wouldn’t be considered major-league odd.

How we perceive what we see is what keeps the innocuous from becoming monotonous, I guess.

I’ve been forcing myself to stay even busier than usual lately; An often-unsuccessful attempt at a distraction from myself. I didn’t need anything, but wanted ice cream, and went to the smaller of the local grocery stores to get it. Independently owned, single location, and a strange mix of normal things and fancy things. I imagine the hybridization is a necessity, since if someone is spending $8 on a bag of hand-made, organic, ethically-sourced supercookies, they may need to save a bit on name-brand white rice and toothpaste.

The outing was a non-necessity, and I was in no particular hurry. I noticed an interesting young couple pull in a few spaces down in a well-kept older convertible, and waited a few moments to exit the car and move behind them, as opposed to walking near arm-in-arm in the small lot. They would very likely never have noticed; I would have noticed.

Read On…

Greg Walsh, by Mark Twight.

(Originally seen in Raze magazine, Issue #1, 2018)

I over-think. But I am not the oft-seen “over-thinker/ under-doer”.

I think hard about deep water because I know I can and will put myself in it, and that it often gets deeper far quicker than even my over-thinkery could account for. Anticipatory pre-redundancy system; If you’re thinking about a single back-up plan, then the need for two is probably already one step ahead of you.

I did not over-think the booking of a recent trip to Salt Lake City to talk and train with a bunch of people I had never met in an environment I had never been in with a purpose that was completely (intriguingly) murky. When the offer was made, I immediately signed on the dotted line and began my plan. My lack of hesitation speaks loudly to the offerers’ quality and quietly to my mental disclarity.

My “plan” was to figure out at all costs how to unravel the tightening knot that my body and brain had found themselves in prior to making a daunting cross-country trip to talk physicality and philosophy with people so interesting to me that I would have walked the distance had that been the directive.

Read On…