Month: February 2018
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A Check-Up at the Home Asylum
It’s now been two months since my psyche broke with reality, on Christmas morning. I started feeling better about three, four weeks ago; at least, I started functioning again. My family and I know this pattern all too well, one that began when I turned seventeen, almost forty years ago. In my first journal, in…
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Journal Writing 2
The one thing about keeping a journal–your subconscious leaks onto the page. That is, if you let it, which you should. This means dealing with disturbing images, notions, thoughts that come and you don’t know why. Unwelcome thoughts, perhaps. But the one who is a committed journal writer will allow that to happen, will even…
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The Writer’s Life: Journal Writing
My first girlfriend, Nancy, gave me a journal when we were in high school. That was in 1977. Forty-one years later, I now have forty-five tomes on my shelves, over ten thousand pages that chronicle my life and the lives of those around me. They are a wealth of information. All my notes for my…
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Surviving Madness, Salvadoran-Style
Last week I wrote about my Uncle Paco, who had played a big role in me finding my Salvadoran roots. He helped me see that I was a guanaco (the nickname for Salvadorans), and in doing so–though he didn’t know this–he helped keep me alive. Three years after meeting him, Michelle and I, newly-married, moved…
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“Nighttime Reading With Marcos: Pablo Neruda”
This is a special segment of TWB podcast, called Nighttime Reading with Marcos. I read every night, and sometimes, when I’m really getting into it, I talk to myself. So I thought, what the heck, turn on the recorder and share it with listeners. This first one is on a poem by Chilean Pablo Neruda,…