Just one final spark...

From whiskey river's commonplace book: The workshop... The paper I write on or you write on, every word we write, every cross and twirl of the pen, and the curious way we write what we think, yet very faintly... In them realities for you and me -- in them poems for you and me... In them themes, hints, provokers.

A microfiction inspired by a photograph I once took

Bobbing like a cork at the edge of all edges...

From whiskey river's commonplace book: Be greeted psychoneurotics! For you see sensitivity in the insensitivity of the world, uncertainty among the world's certainties. For you often feel others as you feel yourselves. For you feel the anxiety of the world, and its bottomless narrowness and self-assurance. For your phobia of washing your hands from the dirt of the world, …

A microfiction, prompted by a photo I once took

What's next here

What lies at the border of dreaming and creating?

From whiskey river's commonplace book (in slightly different wording): Groundedness comes in many forms: resolute common sense, daily prayer or meditation, a regular job that keeps us engaged with material realities, physical exercise, or something as simple as family life. One needs a sufficient engagement with the requirements of the so-called real world so that one is less likely to fall prey to flights of fancy or become engulfed by archetypes, repressed complexes, or manias that will make one lose one's wits.

A microfiction inspired by a photo I once took

WASHINGTON—Emphasizing that he was only going to tell them this one more time, White House plumber Terry Robertson reminded staff Monday that only Donald J. Trump Commemorative Food Waste could be pla...

When you're the only one in the universe, the question is only natural -- but the answer...?

From whiskey river's commonplace book: Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

Can we please think a little less about the short term?

A microfiction prompted by a photograph I once took

All over the map... a bit of a mess, actually!

Glittering miracles at the margin of nodding off and deep sleep

From whiskey river's commonplace book: Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?

A microfiction, inspired by a photograph I once took

Getting to just that one moment — and finding that one point (which is not a point)…

From whiskey river's commonplace book (second paragraph): The ego normally arises as a kind of personal theory about the coherence of experience, an explanation for the consistent association of certain contents of consciousness. For example, the proprioceptive and tactile sensations of the hand in picking up the cup of coffee, the sensations of taste in the mouth and of hot liquid swallowed in the throat, as well as the somatic effects of caffeine to follow, all constellate with visual sensations corresponding to hand, cup, etc., in an emerging sense of self or agency.

A microfiction inspired by a photo I once took

From whiskey river's commonplace book: random haiku It is fairly hardTo lie when writing haiku,Which is fair enough. Nothing much of noteHappens in corners of theGlobe that are remote. And, presumably,The same applies to far flungCorners of the brain. No one has everWritten a bible of howTo be a poet. Being myself a…

Not just any Webster story, but (for obvious reasons) the final one