“First Words,” by Daniel Holland

I always lie when I tell snow stories. You say you walked to school as a kid in two feet of snow. I say I walked in three feet of snow. Not only that–it was 20 degrees below zero. There were no bathrooms in sight, a lot of people around. I was pee-shy.

A few summers ago Daniel and I went swimming in Clear Lake together…on the swimming beach at the Clear Lake State Park. I’m a strong swimmer and he’s more a dog paddler. When he ran into some water plants, he panicked and it felt as if he were having a heart attack. I swam towards…

I was in my boxers enjoying my box turtle while eating my box lunch before the big boxing match on TV. But there was this old TV show “Let’s Make a Deal” and I wanted to know what was in box number 1. Imagine somebody took away the computers, pens and pencils. The only writing…

Through the enchanted forest of postcards I project frames to each picture of time and space. I can control what I do with time: most of the time. But what about an afternoon of road construction delays? Or, I’m waiting in line at the grocery store and the cashier says, “Price check!” Or, I’m waiting…

Why do we scratch our heads when we can’t figure something out? Are we simply buying time? Signalling that we are clueless? Or, do we think we’ll shake our brains a bit, and the information we are looking for will fall out?