An Audacious Dry Martini and Fried Chicken Salad Encouraged Me — The martini arrives as I sit at the bar next to random people I’m not looking at. It’s been some time since I’ve written or posted something new. A few sips into what seems like a quart of gin in a glass, I start to relax. And then I feel…

…Short Game — In Berkeley at a restaurant bar having a Manhattan, attempting to write. Shifting from awareness of the uncompromisingly yet unassumingly beautiful hostess to an attractive brown-haired woman with a suitcase talking to an older friend at the bar with a “sweetie” who shows up and disappears again. It’s a short…

Rittenhouse Square — Is there anything like it where I’m from? — Of course there is. Only in that first moment seeing others walking, reading, I feel something wondrous, new. And of course it is. In such places I find me Why’s it matter? Rittenhouse in Philly vs. at home in afternoon sun? Here I’m surrounded by unknown or different experience, I‘m…

A Man Is Playing Pinball Behind Me — I did not expect this. Sitting at a wine bar I’ve never been to before, alone but for the proprietor. Until a short man comes in and starts talking on the phone about how he was hired as a temp by Tesla before going to work for a lumber company…

What Next? A Hike to Nowhere in Particular But Somewhere With Someone In Mind.

As I begin to drift off I feel a choice between panic and acceptance — My guard goes down as I relax — experiencing myself instead of presenting me. Alone. Afraid before the universe, it’s not so bad, why can’t it last? Upon awakening, I’m momentarily unaware of where I am, and I feel joyful. Imagine that. Just happy, not happy despite the issues, or…

She and I happened to talk at a party. My wife laughed with other friends while her date chatted up two twenty-five-year-olds by the snack table. — As we talked I kept noticing her cleavage in her low-cut dress. My wife glanced over and gave me that extra-bright smile she gives when she sees I may be interested in someone. Ah how I love her! As Angie and I continued to talk I knew she was aware…

Maybe a second before the end I saw through it

As I sat at an outdoor cafe without a mask — …the sun shone down hard. And I realized I’m as open to others as I choose to be. I could have come here a thousand times to this one. Yet I could have sat closed in my own thoughts. I could be here one time and this time open my…