Blog
Asking questions can lead you to new places. Writing helps bring you to answers. And more questions.
Here, I’ve collected writings on a number of topics. Sometimes they’ve been published elsewhere, and other times they’re just for this blog.
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– I’ve started listing things—restaurants, breweries, events. They’re places I’ve been itching to try for some time. They’re places I’ve been to countless times. With the impending Minnesota move fast approaching, I want to drink it all in, savor Indianapolis. Here is a list, in no conscious order, of places I want to try: St.…
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Stephanie woke me around 1 a.m. on Memorial Day, complaining about her knee. The pain, she insisted, kept shooting up and down her leg, but centered in her swollen knee. Groggy, I thought she was being a baby, but after watching the incessant pain rake over her face, contort her body, I knew it was real. Thirty minutes later, we…
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Dear Class of 2015, You’ve graduated, I see—literally, since the photos are everywhere. So I wanted to say, “Congratulations! Way to go!” You’ve just marked a major milestone, one you’ll not regret even when the student loan bills begin to arrive. Believe me, I know. After all, I graduated once, too, all the way in…
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Grass mud horse (for your list of things not to say in public)
When I told my friend Ben that there was a petting zoo at the pumpkin patch, he was mildly amused. But once we arrived, one animal in particular made him ecstatic, chanting its name like some sort of charismatic worshiper. He said: “Llama! Llama! Llama!” I thought it was strange that he was so obsessed…
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Flip the script: vegan fish
I’m already behind. I’m doing this thing called Think Kit. It’s a month of writing prompts to jump start your blog, and a local company called Small Box curates it. I did the first prompt, but dropped the ball yesterday when I received this: What did you change your mind about this year? Was it a big deal – the…
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A Thousand Words
Twenty Fourteen was a huge year for me. Even so, “the year 2014” sounds like the setting for a sci-fi story, and some of the events still feel as surreal as an alien invasion. I could easily write 5,000 words about everything that happened, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version. 1. I graduated It happened May 3, 2014,…
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Before lunch we deconstruct a chimney questioning…
what’s a simile for a brick? _____(as hard as a… _____as heavy as a… _____as red as a…) you build descriptions with bricks, not for them, bricks sit, indifferent— at home the shower water turns black at my feet, while obsidian tornadoes twist from nostril tombs, dropping detritus from my mucus membrane; sell the grime…
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Why Billy Collins told me to eff off
Poet Billy Collins looked at me, across the book signing table, and said, “How about: Go fuck yourself?” The former United States poet laureate stared through his round glasses, face stone serious expression. Quite literally, I was asking for it. Billy Collins read Saturday, Nov. 8, at Central Library as a part of Vonnegut Fest…
James Figy 