Two Questions
What questions do you ask yourself when you are looking for a place to live? I only have two, myself. Read on, Reader! →
View ArticleA Hydrography of Places I’ve Never Been
An essay on eyes that change color, the impoverished fiction of the self, genetic anomalies, and three of the seven seas. Read on, Reader! →
View ArticleRemembering Mr. Goodman
On a warm South Texas Autumn morning, five dozen friends and family gathered in the heat to pay true homage to the beloved Mr. Goodman. Read on, Reader! →
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Étude for Writers (No. 1)
It’s late at night again, and writing isn’t going well. I stare at the page and the page stares back at me. One of us will have to blink. The dogs sleep on my feet. With the curtains...
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Keep Exploring, Up Where the Words Are Thinnest
When you were growing up, there were certain platitudes that got bandied about your person. Roll with the punches was one of the things you heard quite a bit. Take your knocks was another...
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Étude for Writers (No. 2)
This morning, I am the only dancer on this quiet downtown street*. My chin lifts to the wind that rushes ’round the corner of a high building. The wind is always in such a hurry during...
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The Race Isn’t Finished Yet
Today’s story word is “scenery.” Is scenery real? Is it an idea? Is it both real and an idea? *** *BLUEBIRD BLVD. will be writing ON THE ROAD all week. That means no limits,...
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A Different Direction Every Time
Today’s story word is “directions.” Although all places correspond to direct coordinates on a map, are there other kinds of directions one uses to find places both real and imaginary?...
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And All Places In-Between
Today’s story word is “perspective.” Though I’m quite a homebody, I also love to travel. Visiting new places offers me a crisp perspective that’s better than any souvenir. What...
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Take Your Adventure Where You Find It
Today’s story word is “adventurer.” Why do we love the idea of the adventurer so dearly? Do we have a positive word for people who don’t go out adventuring? What must an adventurer do...
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The Choice We Made
Today’s story word is “choice.” As you look at this photograph, I am waking up at home for the first time after nine days on the road with my family. I am in South Texas, walking down a...
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Get Me a Copy Editor!
HEY! SOME IMPORTANT STUFF IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW! NEW RSS FEED for BLUEBIRD BLVD. I have switched to a more functional RSS feed because the native WordPress version has been posting every single...
View ArticleThe Library In Winter
The library at Christmastime is a place of special magic. Won't you join me? Read on, Reader! Source: Bluebird Blvd.
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The Soft Answer
Sometime in December, I found myself sprawled in bed reading one of the Fantagraphics collections of Charles Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts. These collections cover every strip from every year...
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Our Sunday Best: Lit From Within
When writers explain the writing process, they categorize writing as both art and craft. The words themselves are the art medium used to create worlds. The shape and structure of those...
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Only the Pretty Ones, Shining, Shining
If you've tired of seeing magazine cover stories with teasers like "WHICH FIVE OSCAR-WINNING FILM ACTRESSES BATTLE UNSIGHTLY BACK HAIR?" when you're waiting in the checkout line of the grocery store,...
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The Language of the Interior
If you were to tell me profanity is bad, I would have to disagree with you wholeheartedly. Read on, Reader! Source: Bluebird Blvd.
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Changing Lanes in the Middle of the Night
Two weeks ago, our computer started to die. I knew the signs. Old age, tampering by a certain Bluebird, and some hinky hardware were causing our poor Mac laptop to work twice as hard as it...
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Fever Interlude
I went to bed coughing last night. It’s a thin metallic bark, not painful, but disruptive, and the novelty of it amazes me. I never have coughs. Because of its insistent need to be heard, I...
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The Owl and the Pussycat Study Semiotics
When you and I were children not all that long ago, we played a game called dress-up, a game that was very, very real. Read on, Reader! Source: Bluebird Blvd.
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Oh What A Night! (The Year I Covered the Oscars from Half a Mile Away)
Once, a long time ago, I got sent out by a big newspaper to cover the Oscars that no one ever gets to see— the legions of fans and protestors that line up along the street to heckle/adore/photograph...
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Meditations Before A Thunderstorm
ACT ONE In a drought season, the tough skin of the earth splits and tears. It is a great temptation to reach down and pat the firmament, to reassure it, that somehow, somewhere, the...
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In Rattlesnake Season
In rattlesnake season, you wear your boots outside the house, even if you only mean to grab something from the truck. Your eyes read the ground for movement— a twist of the grass, a shadow...
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Diving Into The Wreck— Rest In Peace, Adrienne Rich (1929—2012)
Adrienne Rich passed away yesterday due to complications from lifelong rheumatoid arthritis. Many poets and scholars who knew her well will honor her in ways I cannot. Newspapers have already...
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On Certitude
One of the vivid pictures of my youth, and one I see often, still, is my mother's back disappearing through a crowd of people in a theater. Where is she going? She's leaving the theater. Oh! Read on,...
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Roaring Back: Remembering Maurice Sendak
Childhood is a terrible and fantastic business, really. Maurice Sendak, unlike the rest of us, never forgot the complexity that once knotted our tiny faces. Read on, Reader! Source: Bluebird Blvd.
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Bowing to the Afternoon Rites
Noon is a rite. I bend to a white plate, where a sliver of a tomato curls at the center of a finished lunch. The dogs leaping for the back door at one p.m. is a rite. I tell them to sit....
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A Book Dreams Itself: Discovering Ray Bradbury at the Small Town Library
I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me. Read on, Reader! Source: Bluebird Blvd.
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In My Office
In my office, you will find a 1930s bias cut silk wedding gown I discovered in a trashcan by the road. Read on, Reader! Source: Bluebird Blvd.
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Achoo!
AUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! STUPID! MOUNTAIN! CEDAR! Read on, Reader! Source: Bluebird Blvd.
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I was a dreamy child
I was a dreamy child; this was my mother’s gift to me. She had been a dreamy child herself, and knew exactly what a dreamy child needs– time, space, silence. When I was very small, I hummed...
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Walking Bare-Legged in a Dry Land
This time of year, the South Texas heat fades back like a song tapering off after going on for far too long. The first cold snap is like a new tune— jittery, unexpected, and always...
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Message, Six A.M.
Morning isn’t morning but a rambled message, a dressage of remembered paces over fences so sensationally plain one can do it in a dream. And this message not remembered is this: I wake...
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Walken Bare-legged In A Dry Land
THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION OF Walking Bare-legged in a Dry Land, AS READ IN A DRAWLING, FAMILIAR VOICE. (YOU’LL KNOW WHO IT IS ONCE YOU LISTEN TO IT!) CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO HEAR THE MAGIC:...
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Unpacking the Breath
You may have noticed these last two weeks that my essays and drawings have been a little on the sparse side. Well, I’ve missed you all. In my brief absence, I’ve been busy working on a thing that...
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Night Owl And Early Bird, Wrassling
For the last month, I’ve been waking up between 5 and 6 a.m. — on my own, without an alarm clock, or a dog in my face. (Monkey and Ilsa would never try to wake me because I am an arm-waver...
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The Ball Gown Of Righteous Indignation
Everybody! All together now! And a-one, and a-two! I used to get incensed when I would open the door for someone and not receive an acknowledgment. I think that is an understandable...
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