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My Father’s Grandson

I called my father at his bank in Tulsa. He wasn’t there, as usual, so I left a message with his secretary, as usual. “Tell him, Helouise, that he has a new grandson.” I had to repeat the message twice, as Helouise was well aware that I was an only child and quite unmarried.

The Choice Of Emptiness

I am more and more convinced that only emptiness is creative. On all levels this is true. To be full of tradition is to have no room for the new. To be full of responsibility is to have no room for play. To be full of activity is to have no room for reflection. To be full of self is to have no room to receive another.

Chronicles

(March 22, 1977)

Gently Changing

An Interview On Cancer And Health With O. Carl Simonton

What we have our patients do is to take the symptoms of cancer as the illness, and to look for the five biggest changes that they can identify in their lives in the 18 months prior to the diagnosis being made. If they have had subsequent flareups, they look at the six months prior to each flareup. Then, they look at their emotional reactions to those changes. Finally, with each episode, they look at five good things that happened to them as a result of the diagnosis or of each flareup — what they get out of being sick.

Saying Goodbye To Warren

He was the only friend I had who would dive on the hood of a car. What does that mean? Look around you and you will see it meant a lot.

A Dream I Won’t Forget

An enchanted forest kingdom, a big dark swimming pool, out to sea

Selected Poems

Who Dies?

If we examine our fear of death we see in it a fear of the moment to follow, over which we have no control. In it is a fear of impermanence itself, of the next unknown changing moment of life.

Celluloid Children

Grandma was a person of the Middle Kingdom. The center of civilized life. With one hand she propped up a star-gazer, and with the other she reached down to the bowels of life to offer a hand to the lost and bewildered.

Sunbeams

There are said to be creative pauses,
pauses that are as good as death, empty
and dead as death itself.
And in these awful pauses the
evolutionary change takes place.

D.H. Lawrence