Making Widows Wince

I left a message on Facebook for someone I care about that ended with the words, “one won”. I did it just because I thought was funny. That led to a whimsical discovery that I no longer had to place a period at the end of my sentences – in fact to do so would be rude and identify myself as an old person.  It seems that, for online use anyway, a period has become a loud shout -- a purposeful exclamation point useful only in drawing unnecessary attention, or as a way of making an angry burp of anti-social angst. Sentences no longer end, they gently back out a side door when no one is looking -- they’ve become bars without a jail, or that angry driver just ahead of you who hesitates before moving through an intersection just to make a point of how stupid you are. Since a period is no longer an end to a thought, its new function has evidentially become nothing but a stuffy ritual of formality that writers can now use to mark up or down generalized feeling of huffiness, or ...

Hard Knox “I am not like the others”   Ralph Steadman  As a small child, it was clear to me that I was fundamentally flawed to the core, and that this fundamental flaw was a forever thing that I needed to get used to. It was also clear that I was going to have some explaining to do down the road in order to survive. Eventually the time came when I began to think this basic flaw as my burden -- my original-sin starter pack conveniently stapled to my inner child at birth -- kind of tramp stamped on the way out.    The very best I could do over time was to continually beg for forgiveness and then to accept it, with conditions, if offered. All else in my life was to be a waiting -- just fodder evidenced by a malevolent tilting at windmills and willful acts of self-abuse and abasement.  And that only through grace – that spontaneous gift from God -- that generous, free and both unexpected and undeserved gift, would there be any kind of relief f...

Scuttling A station agent's watch will time The coming and the gone, And affix the here and now Not the powered wheels that turn Not the rails that guide the way Not the pail that shovels coal Not a thing that moves at all I know why she left me here to drift, Though ready till the end of it -- She spiked the cannon on approach And said, “It’s you,” and fled the stage The roar of engines dulls to taps and marks the passing moments Stop or go or stand aside In memory at the house of trains Michael S Brady 2010/2017