Category: Personal
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Something Nice to Say
My wife uses her pregnant belly — her baby bump — as a table. On it: her iPad. She waves her hand. “Hey,” she says. “Fetus doesn’t like this.”
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The Experience of Art
Once, a number of years ago, a young woman I knew vaguely through a mutual friend told me that, for her, art always soured after explanation.
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After Listening to My Father Read Aloud One of My Stories
He read the way I’d heard him read aloud from the Letters of Paul, books of the Old Testament. He’d been a lector at church for years; had also spoken in courtrooms, before judges and opposing council, on behalf of clients (I was one, once upon a time); over the public address at Ryan Field, Wapakoneta’s high…
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Attempts (poem)
I must’ve been difficult to handle alone. My kind of trouble makes bones of bodies, sand of bones.
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What One Player-Coach Conversation Taught Me about Transformations, the Uses (and Limits) of Frustration, and When to Let Go of (Some) Authority.
I called the player over after practice had ended. “Do we have a problem?” I asked him. “Do you want brutal honesty?” I said yes, I did. He looked at the empty field, the sky, the fenced horse pasture beyond. Then he started talking.
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Informal Musings on Gift-Giving, Coaching, Teaching, Beating Yourself Up, and Personal Growth
Here’s a story I started writing about a month ago about my wife and tee-shirts. We’re out back on the patio, doing coffee. There’s a breeze cutting the heat of the sun, which keeps slipping out from behind some shuffling cumulus cloud cover. “I think crushed sounds better than broke,” she says.
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The Now
I was standing on a high school soccer field the other night. A storm front had just rolled past; the air had cooled in its wake. But we never saw a drop of rain. The lights over the field began to glow just as the sky opened to a sunset of oranges, pale blues, and…
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It’s Personal: Some Provisional Insight into Creating Fictional Characters through Research
My character Tim is lonely like I imagine my old friend was lonely all those months he spent working for a lumber company, getting on planes and flying across the country.
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An Open Letter to My Brother
Bro, About the beer can I tossed you: man, I should have made a better throw of it. The minute I saw it go under I felt something in me sink.
Patrick Faller 