This is something probably only an Orthodox Christian would think about but “Why would a hermitage have a web site?”.

Twitter is gone. If people really want to know want to know what’s going on with me they can call or email. Or better yet we can go out for supper some time and talk.

My electronic planners are on the way out. I’m going back to a book, with paper. The next cell phone will be just that, a phone, and if I need to find my way I’ll open an atlas first, GPS second. I’m even working my music backwards and away from the plugs. I want to hear sounds made of wood and steel, breath and valve, stick and skin.

There are simply too many devices around telling me what to do, where to go, and how to communicate. I remember reading once, it was fun as I recall. I remember as well what life was like without the need for a constant supply of batteries. Many years ago watching a thunderstorm was entertainment from the safety of a front porch and when I wanted to experience nature I actually went outside.

No, I’m not a luddite. I’m keeping the computer and the blog and I’m not keen on the idea of cutting the power lines to the house. It’s just that too much is too much and I’ve reached my own personal saturation point. I like pencils, music on the front porch, sun in my face, and hanging out in person. I have this image of myself as a pale, emaciated, creature with large eyes staring at a screen while a tube feeds nutrients in one end and evacuates waste in the other and I’m choosing to rebel against that future.

And it all started with pot. Yes I did “inhale” in high school because I was 17 and at the height of my personal stupidity but that’s decades gone with no regrets. It was more about an incident some days ago when a musician in the acoustic jam I attend talked about how he sometimes smoked a bit before coming to play. My response was that I preferred to be alive, awake, and yes even nervous before I played because I wanted to feel everything as it really is.

Then it occurred to me. There are too many times when I, clean and sober for years when it comes to chemicals, still hang out way to much in a fantasy e-world. I started thinking about whether all those buzzing and whirring devices, the plugs ins and screens, were becoming my own personal “weed”.

And just in case I’m going cold turkey.

and the muscles around my neck are feeling the strain. For over three hours tonight music poured out of me as it does once or twice a week and has from the time I was a child

It’s not that I’m the best. I’m not even close. Yet if my life were a movie there would be a soundtrack and it would be way better than the picture. There is always, has always been, music inside, around, over, and above me. Some time before I was born the spring was wound and the music box has yet to stop.

Now some people swim in a sea of numbers, others in facts, others in tasks. I swim in music and even my words are their best when they sound like lyrics. My life is a song I hope will become a hymn that never ends.

So my fingers hurt, bass strings are like wires, but every other part of me is awake, aware, and alive even as this day closes and the next arrives in my sleep.

You never really know how dirty your carpets are until you buy a new vacuum cleaner.

Found that out this morning. Pulled up enough hair to make a third cat. I’m not that dirty. Really.

about trapping skunks (I have some interesting conversations) and I found out what you use to bait the trap. Spam and sardines. And yes, there apparently is a market for skunk pelts but I do not want to know where.

of reflection, the month of my birthday, the month that marks the passage of time. Every August I think about things, where they’ve gone, and where they may go. August is a pondering month.

When I was a child the age I am now was unimaginable, the age of parents and teachers and doctors. How far away these days were, and how far away were their concerns. But mirrors do not lie and neither do hard to get out of bed mornings. I have arrived and much too quickly for my liking.

I’m happy with the music, a musician being what I should have been if I could do it again, but still it is good to know that it has never died. I’m happy with my family. We’ve changed. We’ve grown. We’re the same faces but different people. Except for the yawning chasm left by my brother’s death there is goodness among us. I continue to write, it feeds me and I feed it. I’m lucky in love, unfortunate in hairline, spreading out some in the middle, but not too old to dream.

Yet I’m restless too. I believe there is something more and its close but not yet here. I feel it but it is undefined. I still have a horizon and probably always will. Always within me is the sense that I was destined for something more, something better, but it is not about the fleeting passage of fame. Rather its the sense that this world, this place, these days, are not my final destination. Everybody hears that call but few listen.

I cannot drown it out.

can be found here.

of the morning when dreams are most vivid I had a dream as well.

I was with a young child and we were walking through my hometown of Wausau, Wisconsin. I was showing him various places and we finally made it to the last home we lived in which, far from its current run down shape, was bright, vibrant, and large. On the street by the house there were a group of teenagers playing basketball, some I knew and some I didn’t, but I joined the game and took a few shots.

Then, in the moment, I said “You know what I want to do when I get to heaven? I want to shoot hoops.”

Interesting, and a pleasant dream.