About my writing:
“I see myself staunching wounds. All the pages of all my books going into a great hole in people and slowing the loss of blood.”
Talking with an old friend about art.  Her philosophy came up, and mine, and my place in the world through art.  That’s what I came up with.  I don’t [...]

You wonder if you have something good to say, something better than usual because you’ve been quiet.  Time passes and the burden grows.  After a while it becomes hard to say anything at all.  Partly I’m silent because I think it’s the better course of action.  I don’t know if what I want to say [...]

I’ve thought a time or two about quitting this.  I don’t need to sing to you, to string words together that aren’t half as good as what I could put down elsewhere, to tell you the story of my life as though its saying was worth the breath.  I don’t know that it is.  I [...]

I’ve deleted two posts trying to write this down.  I’ve had trouble concentrating late at night and I have trouble sleeping–though the latter’s nothing new.  I feel like I’ve successfully compartmentalized myself.  I feel like I’m in a Murakami novel.  I’ve put my heart and brain away in jars and I take them down from [...]

Mostly a post of miscellany, but with this little kernel:  a long, long time ago I diagnosed myself with a deep need to appease the father figures in my life.  My dad was absent or lacking through a part of my childhood, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put these two things together*.  [...]

I walk a lot here.  I walk about two miles to the grocery for a few pieces of fruit and some bread and my housemates laugh when I come in and see the bags.  Gone for two hours for $10 worth of food.  I guess my time just isn’t worth much these days.  I have [...]

There is a tendency for people to call me by my last name.  I don’t know why this is.  Furthermore, they have a tendency to shorten my name to Shonk, or Shonky.  I hate this with a passion.  What I don’t hate, though, is when my name gets turned into a verb, which has now [...]

It was almost ten years ago that I fell in love with a girl who cannot be overstated in my life.  I don’t remember how exactly things came about–I don’t recall any seduction.  I remember sitting on the sidewalk with the sun beginning to set, thinking about God, and her, and hoping she’d come outside.  [...]

Walked out of my new house this afternoon with Long December playing.  Strange to listen to it while in California, strange still to see palm trees, to walk outside in late October with the sun hot.  The song means a lot to me.  Like most songs I’ve pinned it to a woman, and in this [...]

Name your five most character-building memories.  Your five happiest.  Top five kisses.  Your desert island albums and books.  I know mine, I think.
Last Thursday a good friend of mine flew in from out of state and stayed with me until Monday evening.  Old readers will know her as the Antagonist.  The moment we got in [...]