Don's Writing Reboot

  "pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond)   plays with the bigness of his littleness --- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself.                           A world of made is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh   and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical   ultraomnipotence. We doctors know   a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go  " e. e. cummings   Just because. I happen to think of e.e. cummings as one of the world's greatest sonneteers.   Yes, sonnets. Those fourteen line poems Shakespeare wrote. How can I count the lines? ...

  I hesitate to post a war story, but I wanted to personally thank a young man whose name was lost to me until a recent fortuitous communication from John Mayer, someone I served with in Vietnam. John was just reaching out to see if anyone else from his company happened to be out there in the world. Somehow, he tracked me down and we've exchanged a few e-mails. While it's fresh in my mind, I want to tell the story of a mutual friend who changed both of our lives. I will back up a bit first to give some of the atmosphere in which this story takes place. In fact, I will go back to my communication with the draft board in Pitkin County. Every 18-year-old was required to register for the draft but based on my personal beliefs, hinted in an earlier post about killing a deer, I wanted status as a conscientious objector. I was of course intending to do a couple of years of alternative service rather than going into the army, where I was sure both the army and I would be unhappy. The...