In chapter eleven of the instructional section of Stephen King’s book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft —the only King book I’ve ever read—, he expresses his belief in an unattributed notion that...
Spotlights
If you watched me do the dishes, saw the way I stacked the plates and bowls first, then ran the water. If you could see how I did laundry, how I remove every fold, every crease, while the clothes dry...
WORDS FOR THE MINISTER
For the first half of my life, both sets of my grandparents lived in Sarnia. When my mom, dad, brother, and I went to visit, we would stay at my mom’s parents house, and spend some of the time...
Never Again
Success has changed. From the age of five until twenty-three—eighteen critical years— the terms and measures of my success were summated into a quantitative report delivered right to my person...
IF EVER I WERE SO ACUTELY NERVOUS AGAIN, I WOULDN’T HESITATE TO SEEK THE SAME REPRIEVE
I had a reoccurring nightmare as a child in which I was confined in a large mausoleum by threat of numerous slow moving ice zombies. In this dream, I could always outrun the individual zombies but I...
Confessions of a Young Driver
In the hallway of the driving school that I attended at sixteen, there was a poster that said the school’s hope for their graduates, with their newly gained knowledge and skills, was for them to be...
Happenings and Takeaways, Sleepover Camp circa 2009
I’m surely imagining the sounds of snapping bones and rupturing insides when I recall the memory of striking a mouse with a canoe paddle all those years ago. But not imagined are the sudden limpness...
—
I have no plans tomorrow. Right now it’s Wednesday July 14th, 12:43 AM. Tomorrow is here. When I got into bed not long ago, it was yesterday, but after lying sleeplessly — my mind flipping as though...
Eight Metaphors for Being Guarded
In April 2019, I was sitting in the University of Guelph library, on the third floor at 8 PM. I was studying. Early April marked the end of regular scheduled classes and the beginning of the exam...
The Man I like v. The Man I Don’t Know
I was biking up a gravel hill in my lowest gear for twenty minutes when I thought of this. The road was chunky and rough, my bike was loaded with gear, and the rest of the group was ahead of me. I...