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A series of ruminations on the loss of a father and a legacy uncovered later in life. A writer finds his father and his voice in “middle age.”

Fragments of my Father, a memoir is now available as an eBook.

Download the first 30% for free. Available in all the various eBook formats: Kindle, Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, and others, PDF, RTF, Palm Doc, and Plain Text.

Contact me if you would like a free reviewer’s copy.

Check out Fragments of my Father, a memoir’s Google + page.

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A tragic short story. A father and son are pushed beyond their limits by circumstances. Sailing their small boat offshore in winter, their luck runs out….

My short story, The Island, is now available as an eBook.

Download the first 30% for free. Available in all the various eBook formats: Kindle, Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, and others, PDF, RTF, Palm Doc, and Plain Text.

Contact me if you would like a free reviewer’s copy.

Check out The Island’s Google + page.

A series of ruminations on the loss of a father and a legacy uncovered later in life. A writer finds his father and his voice in “middle age.”

Fragments of my Father, a memoir, is now available as an eBook here.

Spring Cleaning over at Something for Nothing‘s site!

Let me know what you think!

I’ve recently revamped the web site for Shoal Hope. It should make it easier to navigate and to read the excerpts and synopsis.

Let me know what you think!

Here’s how it all began, taken from Vinay’s Introduction:

If you don’t know the story of how the book was written, it’s very simple: I asked on twitter.

“@leashless I’m putting together a book called The Future We Deserve, open brief, 500 words, sign up….

I was happy to have contributed two essays to this collection put together by Vinay Gupta and edited by Vinay, Cat Lupton, and Noah Raford.

My thanks go out to Vinay Cat and Noah. Congratulations!

A retelling of the Folk Tale, Stone Soup, and a conversation about its resonance with the role of the artist today.

“The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe. Although we pretend we’re empiricists — our views dictated by nothing but the facts — we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories. The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.“

This could be taken as the Epitaph of our times. We have run into the barriers hidden by these blinkers in every field of endeavor and every avenue of research. This is a fundamental dynamic behind our crises of expertize and of leadership. What is needed is disciplined action that avoids the common pitfalls. For this to happen we need to challenge what we consider to be disciplined AND what is action.

“This is what I do.” I get between assumptions and question expectations. This is what makes sense out of what would otherwise look like a scattered C. V.! I am conversant within a wide range of fields and can communicate with specialists ranging from philosophers to hackers, from poets to engineers. And, I cultivate an instinct to get past assumptions, my own as much as anyone else’s.

What this article describes as functions of areas in the brain, I’ve been coming to see as “Negative Capability.” It may sound like a disease, but it is the ability to defer judgement and hold onto apparent oppositions without forcing a conclusion prematurely.

In current expectations, premature might count as minutes or days, but who would seriously imagine withholding judgement for twenty or thirty years! That’s when we get into range of negative capability. That is the span of effort and insight we need to avoid the common traps.

Again, referring to Jonah Lehrer, we tend to find the mixture of traits he discusses in the young. They tend to be free of allegiance to a status-quo. What they lack is range of perspective and the patience to avoid falling into traps laid out for the unwary. There is something insincere and desperate about turning to the “innocents” looking for judgement. Even the most brilliant prodigies are unable to grasp the wider framework around their discoveries.

It’s another “sign of the times” that this be the subject of such confusion! My own included! It’s just that blinkered urgency has taken us into overshoot in this as in so many other ways.

There are people who express these traits.

This is what I do.

Two poems I’m hoping to read during the Open Mike session at this Fall’s first Writer’s Voice Café upstairs at Napi’s Restaurant in Provincetown, November 9 at 7:00 PM

Inter Penetrated Waves

Coruscation