I’ve moved the art that used to be posted on this site to Zatista, a online gallery that offers my work for sale.  Please visit!

And see my posts on making and selling art on Signals to Attend, my current blog.

I’ve started new blogs:

Haiku Streak: I’ll post my daily haiku there (and store the haiku from this site when I delete it).

Signals to Attend: I’ll post essays there (and possibly reprise some of the essays included here).

I hope to add a poetry site shortly.

These sites will also use my real name (in case you’re curious).

They wait at the signs
telling them it’s a bus stop,
trying not to see

each other, the sky,
anything close to here.  Some
have papers or books

to take them away,
but they stare too. The bus is
more reliable.

The middle distance
promises some salvation,
a sweep of motion

that, across the street, appears
to make them vanish.

Perhaps the end of this blog inspires me to speak, but I can’t resist a little political candor.

Up to now, I’ve avoided politics, and when I couldn’t resist weighing in, I’ve weighed both sides, criticized both sides, and generally remained what has become my favorite word, circumspect. I’ve tried to say something hopeful.  Today, however, I can’t resist giving in to my political despair.  Another election determined by imagery and performance?  Please, no.

McCain’s lead in the polls horrifies me.  I’m not sure I can survive one more triumph of style over substance.

I keep slipping into the thought that maybe we deserve him. Maybe a nation that can’t understand complex issues or ignores policy in favor of whims deserves the terrible leaders it gets.  Maybe a nation that prefers a clear narrative—any narrative—to deliberation and discernment gets its just reward.  Maybe we, and not our leaders, deserve credit for the latest failure of this great American experiment in democracy.  What would our founders think?  Thomas Jefferson could not have expected such sheep.

In its appraisal of Sarah Palin talking to Charles Gibson, Slate wrote:

It was painfully obvious—from the rote nature of her responses, the repetition of hammered-home phrases, and the non sequiturs that leapt up when she found herself led around an unfamiliar bend—that there is not a millimeter of depth undergirding those recitations, that she had never given a moment’s thought to these matters before two weeks ago.

More favorable accounts of her performance make her out to be a high school student defending a master’s thesis.  We are supposed to like her for making the effort, for being vehement and well-briefed on what Gibson might ask and how to answer.  But should this pop star—I don’t know how else to describe her—get credit simply for  performing well? If one half-step off the path leads her into empty talking points, if her performance evidences flair but little or no understanding, is that a reason to praise her?

But that’s only what I ask.  Others see a straight-shooting tough cookie where I see someone stringing clichés like informercials.  Others praise McCain for his maverick choice, calling it political genius.  I suppose it might be.  Thus far, he certainly seems to found something for us to buzz over now that Batman and the audacity of hope is stale.  Never mind we’ve reached crises that require real genius, not pandering.

We’ve had our head turned.  Even worse, somehow we think that’s a good thing.

When John McCain condemns Obama for voting the same way he did in the senate, he relies on our ignorance.  When the oldest presidential nominee in history chooses a diversionary, patently unqualified running mate, he relies on our superficiality.  When Karl Rove uses the same attributes to slam others and praise Palin, he hopes for amnesia.

Are we really going to justify those hopes?

I keep hearing people say they have a good feeling about John McCain and Sarah Palin, that they seem people they’d like.  In person, maybe I’d like them too, but I have many close friends I like more who I’d never think of electing. I know better than to rely on feelings.

Okay, maybe Obama bears guilt for some image-mongering too, but he at least seems to have a higher opinion of us.  At least he acknowledges the complexity of the challenges we face and resists the appeal of a ready, drum-thumping answer.  He hangs onto the hope we can still use our brains and tell wax from flesh, flash from light.

Crepe paper in the punch bowl
bleeds red into the yellow,
and signs turned down shout

into the floor. One sleeping
reveler seated in the corner
dreams time goes on, voices

screaming against the current
of sound.  A storm of movement
still stirs under his lidded eyes,

and he rises, stumbling in
and out of my sight.
In this silence, I’m immobile,

replacing objects in untouched
spots, looking for what might
stay.  The air stops.  Light

dims and dies at the bidding
of an unseen hand, and I’m
headed home, one hand out
to lead my way.

…please stop me.

Joe Felso is actually my third incarnation as a blogger. The first time I wrote a haiku a day and an essay a month, book reviews every once in a while, and, if I couldn’t think on anything else, pasted in poems I’d written long before. That blog wasn’t successful in any sense. I posted so infrequently, the only audience that could enjoy following that blog would also enjoy an afternoon watching flowers turn to the sun. I didn’t write enough to make it worthwhile even for me.

The second blog was a scary birth, so flawed in conception and design that it lasted only long enough to gasp its last breath.

This time I’ve tried much harder. For months I posted everyday, and then cut back to three or four times a week, which is still a lot. Though no one would mistake me for a self-promotion machine, I sought readers and tried to join a blogging community. I did have visitors this time.

But now this blog is ending just as the others have. So I’m thinking about what I did wrong or what I’d do differently next time…if there is one…someday. What advice would this spent blogger offer a new one?

1. Pace Yourself. Even a true believer in the power of consistent and dedicated practice will reach a point when pleasure drains from the process and the highest aesthetic standard becomes completion. WordPress tells bloggers that consistent posting will cultivate an audience, and, as I learned with my first blog, that’s certainly so. However, it won’t do you much good to post frequent crap. Every writer strikes a compromise between quality and productivity, and it helps to know your limits and post only as often as you can post well. Or forgive yourself if you can’t post well and try again tomorrow—consistency is a mighty big picture.

2. Specialize. Several blogs representing your different spheres of creativity may be better than one blog full of everything. Joe Felso purports to be Joe Average, representative. But the circles of my Venn diagrams describe eccentric intersections. I wonder if readers prefer knowing what they will encounter on a site, whether—as impressive as it might seem to offer more, more, more—a niche is more appealing than a pile. It’s one thing to create a consistent and reliable voice and another to sound the same no matter what your subject.

3. Use your name. Contrary to what you may expect, another name might not vanquish your fear of honesty, make you bold, or protect you. The greatest courage is being yourself. It’s tough to express conviction behind a mask, and the time may come when you will hunger to be yourself, honestly and openly. You owe some protection to the people around you—keep them hidden—but be yourself.

4. Know why you’re blogging. It’s easy to get caught up in the statistics and find yourself either twisting to appeal to readers or judging your work by how many visitors arrive. It takes a strong person to watch the blogstat line and not be moved by it in some way. A stronger person could ignore the stats and focus on his or her own motives.

Perhaps after a few months or years of unfettered free time, I may blog again. But this experience still needs to come into focus. If I blog again, I want to get it right.

All I remember of her is dinner
in my apartment—a candle’s crooked wick

breaking and burning in parts, a waif doused
in a wax sea.  She eased her fingers into

the flame bed, nimbly coating their tips.
With surprised looks, she winced, blowing

to abbreviate pain, then removed
the wax caps—the casts of her most extreme

self—and lay them like petals on the table.
I thought, maybe she wants to know if I

will stop her, will arrest her hands, will
reach to put out her pleasure’s glow.

Anyone visiting here recently might not be surprised to learn this blog is coming to an end.

This post is number 360, and, at present pace, I’ll soon post for the 365th time. That will be enough. Though Joe Felso will circle like a derelict satellite for a while—long enough for me to copy everything—I won’t be adding any new posts after September 15th.

In my head, I’ve composed this pre-mortem several times, looking for ways to explain my departure that won’t sound like (or feel like) failure. I won’t manage it, but I’ve done the hardest part—saying I’m bowing out.

My decision is no rejection of the blogosphere. I’m not turning my nose up at what happens here.

Quite the contrary, the strangest part of blogging— not knowing who’s out there—is also what’s best about it. Publishing may be the pinnacle of success in the real world, but, to a blogger, creating a book can seem akin to creating a statue—no one sees it until the artist has polished every part. When he or she wheels it out of the workshop, it appears to have always existed, as if it’d been found rather than made. Books have instant esteem because they’re already wanted—by publishers at least—and anticipated.

In contrast, blogging has a more intimate charm. It can be like small town radio—you, sitting in a tiny room, talking into a microphone that may or may not work, sending your voice over cornfields, a kind of constant casting out into seas without fish. The idea, it seems, is to speak just to find out what you’ll say. When people listen, it means something.

Most people who don’t blog don’t take blogs very seriously. Friends sometimes seem embarrassed when you say you have a blog, and some real—meaning published—writers can be particularly disdainful, regarding blogs as an affront to editing and artfulness and decorous self-restraint.

That perspective couldn’t be more mistaken. You don’t have to read very long in WordPress or elsewhere to discover articulate, thoughtful, and skilled writers. Maybe more ambitious writers think giving prose or poetry away for free diminishes its quality—and some of the work online IS naïve—but hoping to earn an audience also makes the writing more sincere…and often more compelling.

So, why would I leave? The pace has broken me. The other side of blogging’s intimate charm is its intimate demands, the entreaties of an endlessly needy lover. When the only pay you receive for your writing is attention, you’re challenged with soliciting that attention over and over. I know I could decide not to care, say this blog is all for me, and claim having readers doesn’t matter. That would be a lie, however. I write for readers. I’m grateful for the people who’ve supported me, and, if I’m being honest, I have to say they’ve sustained me, kept me thinking I might have something worthwhile to say when I wasn’t as sure.

Quite rightly, having readers arises partly from being a reader. It’s reciprocal. You are supposed to visit blogs as an invitation to your own. Yet, having spent so much energy creating new product and responding to comments, I’m exhausted. I can’t find the energy to visit elsewhere, only the energy to regret it. Most of my visitors now are image seekers. Most of the reading bloggers are elsewhere, and I don’t blame them.

As little as I visit, I can see how crowded the market is. The proliferation of writing online is daunting. Blogging challenges you to win readers, yes, but it also tries your confidence. You must convince yourself that, of all these writers, you have something important to add. For me, that’s analogous to finding the comment I’d make already affixed to a post. I could just make the comment again and regard it as valuable… because this time I said it. The blogosphere allows me to believe that, to believe self-expression trumps everything else. Maybe some bloggers see venting frustration as their only aim. I’m not judging them—perhaps I shouldn’t hope for more—but I’m tired of wringing my hands.

I’m proud of the volume of work here, and soon seems a good time to stop.

In time lapse, sun sculls along horizons—
rising, setting, pulling deeper currents.
Drifting sand finds no traction, but you try
not to see it that way. Instead, routine
assembles each day beside each other,
another shade darker or lighter, not quite
the same. Tell me, how do you pass the time?
When the waves in front me tilt and slide,
I do as they say, I look for some landmark.
But what besides us will do—a place
I’m expected, a question waiting? I drift
with days, they drift with me. I’m only sure
about us. And even us—though we seem
still—time drags into open water.

I’ll be fifty in October.

Lately I’ve been saying that a lot, adding it onto statements as explanation, emphasis, authority, or excuse.  “I’ll be fifty in October,” I say, “and just can’t scale climbing walls anymore.”  Or I say, “This is the strangest running mate choice I’ve ever seen, and I’m turning fifty in October.”

The other day I heard myself say, “My fiftieth birthday is in October, and I still don’t know what I want to be.”

I know fifty is just another year—in base eight I’m remarkably well-preserved, and in base sixteen, I just became legal. But at my base ten age I expect to have more comportment, more calm, more gravitas.  I’ve always thought getting older meant striving less and looking back at successes more.

Of course, at fifty, there’s still plenty of time left to publish a book or become a respected artist, but hope doesn’t come as naturally as it does to younger folks. Besides having the world ahead of them, they have a crew of cheerleaders reminding them of their opportunities, their gifts, and their promise. They also have the anxiety of choosing among many doors—no thank you to that part—but their family and peers are, for the most part, hoping for the best and dreaming of a successful future.

In contrast, I have General Douglas MacArthur whispering  Corinthians in my ear, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.”

Fifty feels like the start of my putting away period.  Maybe it’s time to put away that fantasy of talking to Terry Gross about my new book to on Fresh Air.  Maybe it’s time to stop comparing my own, way-back-then mile times to those of the athletes I coach.  Maybe it’s time to give it a rest and accept that, though I’m not famous or successful on a grand, universal scale, I’ve found a comfortable and mostly satisfying life. Perhaps that’s plenty. Maybe I’ve had success enough.  Maybe I need to stop wanting more.

Success is, after all, more a matter of definition than attainment—your own sense of attainment versus society’s quite possibly flawed vision of success.  Wouldn’t it be nice if fifty brought me tranquility, appreciation, contentment?

I am tired, but, at nearly fifty, I’m clearly not tired enough.  No one should be ready to put me in the retirement home, and I’m not ready either.  Yet I wouldn’t mind slowing down, wouldn’t mind a little less fire in my belly…which, now, I have trouble distinguishing from reflux.

Thankfully, I’m healthy and relatively free of the indignities of aging I’ll suffer later.  People tell me I don’t look fifty.  That’s nice but also sad.  Inside, 1980 doesn’t seem that long ago either, and I carry many of the same unfulfilled ambitions of that year.  Maybe if I looked older, I might be forgiven for resting.  I might forgive myself. Sometimes I think that’s all I desire, all I ought to desire, all I have a right to desire.

As a child, I knew exactly how old I’d be when the century turned, and I was aiming for that moment, sure of where it would find me.  Now turning 50 feels like half way.  As I venture into more unimagined territory, I’m carrying all the same luggage.  I wish I had a better sense of where I’m going.

I might satisfy for knowing where I’ve been.