Generation after generation, Vice and virtue breed with one another, Until hate is easy, and love is maudlin. And hearts, like flies over muck, do hover. O that one could sever this sullied past From we whose hearts are stained and sunk by it. That which we are told to put first, comes last, In the order of crude survivalists. Love is preached and praised, but rarely practiced. Art is punished unless profitable. More valued are the words, about them, lisped. So we cannot bear to leave the bubble. In your own reflection find your own way To marry past and present with today.

#poetry #sonnet

Thank you for reading! Sonnets are my way of coping with stress, I guess. Gives me something to think about while my daughter is playing with puzzles at the library, and keeps me from scrolling on my phone. I hope you like it. If I get more I think I will post them here sooner rather than later. What else is a blog for?

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I met them in the margin of a used book,  next to difficult paragraphs  and subtle thoughts.

A penciled question mark  told me all I wanted to know ?  about their mind.

If I gave this book to a friend, I would have to tell them, “The marks are not mine.

“They are the marks of a mind, grappling, stretching, struggling. In a word: reading.

“Though I will say I admire them for persevering with a book, with which they seem to disagree.

“When was the last time you read a book, whose message grated on you, ! and made you want to shut it?

“In this day in age, we put such stock in the cover in our hands and what it says about us.

“Maybe that is why, they put in those marks instead of giving up.

“In that case, I can't fault them. We do what we must to keep reading, when we know it is good for us.”

I suppose those marks in the margin, on the whole, though distracting, made me read deeper into a book

Which I was wont to accept without protest or criticism. Thank you, friend, ☺

For making my mind sharper. If we ever meet,  I hope to return the favor.

#poetry

I hope you enjoyed this “sequel” to my original short poem In the Margin. I have been reading a book of Robert Frost poems, and have come to really enjoy his deceptively simple dialogue. This was my attempt to adapt the technique, and I hope you liked it.

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#poetry #sonnet

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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— Sonnet 3, The Gospel of Eliphaz

“Lord, what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!”

— G.K. Chesterton, The Napolean of Notting Hill

I think that sonnet might hold some clues as to my mood for most of April. Yet I am optimistic today. The more I think and strive, the more I feel that joy is a discipline. And truly, the World is not going to make it easy except for the fortunate few blown upwards by the top of the wheel, to rejoice. Here's to trying, and here's to writing.

Writing

My toddler has been dropping a nap, which means my predictable writing time is not so predictable any more. I am planning to try and get up early at least a few days a week this month, and hopefully make it a habit going into the summer (which will also give me motivation to go to bed earlier). I am still plodding away on re-writing the climax and end of the book/series. Hopefully after this re-write it will be somewhat readable for other people. I am also working on an essay about re-reading Tolkien that I am hoping will show up later this month.

Music

I recorded a demo of my 'worship song,' and am working up the courage to maybe perform it in church. I am also hoping to get some more recordings done for Lit Songs, so that I can have a proper demo album of it. Am also really hoping to get together with friends to jam and play. It is so hard to find time, and it feels like a miracle whenever I can get together with people. I suppose that is normal for adult life with kids, but I wish it wasn't.

Reading

According to Bookwyrm I read Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White, and The Napolean of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton. I enjoyed all of them. In fact, I enjoyed Charlotte's Web so much that I wrote a thing about it, that you can read on this blog! I am still reading like a spider with too many flies in its web, but I don't think that can be helped.

Listening

I fell off the cliff of Twenty One Pilots again. It started with Blurryface, than I went to Clancy, then Scaled and Icy. I have been admiring the mixes a lot. I think Scaled and Icy is perhaps one of the best mixed albums I've ever heard. By mix I mean the texture and overall quality of the sound. There are a great many instruments and elements on that disc, and you can hear every single one perfectly. Nothing is muddied over or too loud. Just one cohesive sound. As an amateur “mixer,” I can't overstate how hard it is to get different instruments and voices to agree. Anyway, the songs themselves do what Twenty One Pilots has always done for me in providing catharsis and reinterpretation for the daily pain of existence. Stay alive, friend.

#update #poetry #May2025

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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— For Once, Become

There will never be a safe or easy time to practice art. If anyone reads or listens to my art in the future they will only have the shallowest context. There is no way to diminish the very real suffering of the world and our time, nor can I find any loophole in my conscience that allows me to ignore it, but I also cannot allow it to stop me from creating. And so far as it feels like an insensitive heresy to say, there are generations of writers and artists who did not stop their art in periods of even more intense suffering. Many of them never saw profit or praise while they were living. We cannot choose the times into which we are born, “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Writing

I am slowly pushing through, but I am now running into the messiness of my drafting. It is going slower now. But I'll get there eventually. Also querying a couple times a week. Already received a very encouraging rejection, so yay.

Music

I wrote a 'worship' song and am in the process of recording the demo and trying to polish it. I honestly don't know how I feel about it. It doesn't feel like “my song,” which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism, as Tyler Joseph said. If the song is not good then I don't have to feel bad about myself because it is the song's fault. Was inspired by Pollyanna and Bob Marley (see below).

Reading

In March I read a lot of experimental and concept fiction, mainly short stories by Ted Chiang and Jorge Luis Borges and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. If you would like more in-depth-half-baked reviews of what I read you can follow me on Bookwyrm. I guess I just wanted to see how much you can achieve with experimental concept stuff, because I feel there is often a dichotomy between experimental sc-fi/fantasy and deep literary work. I can't say that Chiang or Russel fully impressed me. Their ideas were excellent, up there with the most excellent ideas in any sci-fi I've read, but especially in Chiang's case I felt that everything in the story was sacrificed to the idea. Characters are simply there (for Chiang) to highlight a consequence of the experimental idea. Russel was better. Borges was kind of a mixed bag in that regard. He lets his characters pull against the idea more, so to me they felt more consistently deep than Chiang's work. Anyway, my fragmented reading history, and the fragmented nature of this paragraph, represent the fragmented nature of my mind. Let me take a moment to dismantle and examine it like the mechanical being in Ted Chiang's Exhalation — I do a lot of things: writing, music, coding, guitar pedal and cabinet building, biking and bike maintenance, language study, crosswords... I have never considered myself gifted or special, but I do reject the notion that our mind has limited space, and there are a lot of way more talented people out there who can bust the myth that our brain is like a cabinet. But I do have limited time and energy, especially in this season of life. I need to cut down on my hobbies and focus on my writing and my music and my languages. — There, thanks. Lemme just re-assemble everything...

Listening

I discovered Bob Marley while skiing. One of the lifties was playing it and I heard “So don't treat me like a puppet on a string, cause I know how to do my thing. Don't talk to me as if you think I'm dumb, I just wanna know when you're gonna come.” And I felt seen. Then I listened to the albums Exodus and Uprising and discovered just how deep a place Bob Marley is coming from. I don't really know much of the context, but I could feel the struggle against pain with love through the music and the lyrics. As someone who only knew “Three Little Birds” and “One Love,” it was lovely, and still is, to listen to. Some of my favorites include “So Much Things to Say,” “Forever Loving Jah,” and “Guiltiness.”

Bonus: Pollyanna (1960 film)

Since my family and I were able to take a vacation to NH, we visited the hometown of the author who wrote Pollyanna. Before we visited we watched the 1960 Disney movie and it was beautiful. Pollyanna, an orphaned missionary girl, comes to live with her aunt in a stuffy New England town. Despite the fact that she just lost her parents, she plays a game her father invented called “The Glad Game,” by finding something to be glad about no matter the situation. Since it is a stuffy New England town, everyone is grumpy about her gladness, but she ends up changing their hearts.

I realize it sounds rather sentimental and over-optimistic, but anyone who has ever experienced pain knows the necessity of cheerful hope. Haley Mills (who plays Pollyanna) does an incredible job of showing on her face just how shrewd Pollyanna is. She's not naive. She's fully aware how angry people get and how much it hurts when they put her down, but she perseveres in the love her father taught her. Yes, its Disneyfied, but it honestly doesn't take much away from the story. The scene where she explains the basis of the Glad Game (over 800 verses in the bible that tell us to Rejoice), while the Reverend of the town has a spiritual breakdown because he's been preaching fire and brimstone and realizes how misguided he's been is genuinely beautiful and moving.

Pollyanna is one who could sing with Bob Marley:

“So, old man river, don't cry for me I've got a running stream of love you see So, no matter what stages, oh stages Stages, stages they put us through We'll never be blue No matter what rages, oh rages Changes, rages they put us through We'll never be blue We'll be forever, yeah!”

Anyway. It was personally convicting because I am perpetually melancholy. Go watch it and cry. I'll be reading the book soon.

See you next month.

#update #poetry #April2025

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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— Hunter Dansin, Sonnet 2: Crutch Comforts

Well I have been writing sonnets, and my wife told me they are not half bad, so here's to being a poet. How easy it is to hold onto bitterness, and how tempting to heap scorn on perceived enemies and hopes disappointed. But the annihilater of reactionism is the truth that the only way forward is love. It is Martin Luther King Jr's “way of the strong man.” And how many that read this laugh bitterly and look at me like a doormat? Don't you think the man who most strongly feels indignation is the one most fervently acting in opposition to it? Those of us who strive to be kind, to love, to hope and live creatively are not blind. It is a fight. I am not quite sure who I am reacting to. Probably the news, this country's president, some circumstance in my own life. Well. It's not all bad. I've been writing. We are provided for. My family is beautiful.

Writing

I have been more or less steadily editing chapters of the last part of the book and it has been going about as well as I could hope. It is coming together I think, and I have been finding joy in it. I am bracing myself for the utter lack of structure towards the end though, and the work to flesh that together will probably be significant, but I will enjoy it more than querying, which (fingers crossed) I will begin doing for the first book this month. I just need to nail my comp titles down.

Audiobook

I think I am going to freeze work on it for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately it just takes too much time, and since I am seeking publication for the first novel it is probably a good idea to wait.

Music

But I do hope to produce some music. I still want to make a demo album for Lit Songs, and I made a small microphone upgrade which I am hoping will improve the vocals.

Reading

I almost accidentally titled this section “James Baldwin” while I was typing it, which would actually be a good summary of my February reading. I read two of his novels and a short story collection, and I loved it all. The usual tropes of ™Literature do not bother me with Baldwin, because he does not seem indulgent about it. He never loses his sense of purpose, and he has so much skill that no matter how ludicrous some of his character's behavior is it never feels unnatural. If you're curious about Baldwin but a little apprehensive, I would recommend the short story Sonny's Blues, and the novel Go Tell it on the Mountain.

And now I would like to ask, why do you read? I have been thinking about this question as I have been working my through The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf. It is a slow burn novel, with next to no plot, and is a good representation of what many people bounce off of when they try to read some, ahem, ™Literature. Even I found myself asking, “why am I reading this?” “Is anything going to happen?” “Why should I care about these well to do british folks on holiday?” And then about 124 pages in I was utterly engrossed in Woolf's description of a young woman simply anguishing in the meaninglessness and terror and beauty of existence as she frolicked on a windy knoll. It was more immersive than any immersive video game I have ever played, more captivating than any thrilling scifi novel, more magical than any fantasy — because it was so real and because Virginia's description of her lived experience was so visceral. It reminded me of what grabbed me about her when I barreled into To the Lighthouse for the first time. I do not mean to look down on scifi or fantasy or pop romance or what have you — they have their place (and I myself am writing a fantasy novel...) — But if you haven't challenged yourself to read something difficult or a little more “Lit” then please please try. It will be hard, and depending on what you pick you might just hate it. But try again, because when you find a novel that encapsulates your lived experience, and not only encapsulates but expands and stretches it beyond what you imagined, it is unlike any other reading, and it might just feed your soul. Oh, and skip the foreword unless you care about that sort of thing, it will probably make you want to read the book less.

Listening

In the vein of sounding pretentious I have also been listening to Handel's Messiah. I picked up the CDs at a thrift store a few years ago and bounced off it pretty quick the first time, but this time I just left the disc in the van and have been giving it a shot. The musical skill is undeniable, but I think, unless you are sitting there live to appreciate the living breathing musicians it can feel a little showoffy. The theme does not help this feeling, but after leaving it on for awhile the music started to sink into me a little, and I was able to listen more attentively. Specifically on disc 2, there is a refrain sung by a truly gifted singer, that says “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow,” and the voice and the melody brought me to tears. In this age where it is almost impossible to tell if “authentic” singers have had digital help to correct their meaningless whispers, it is really refreshing to hear true singers, people who can stand in front of an orchestra without amplification or pitch correction and blast the Savior's sorrow from their belly. I had the great honor to take voice lessons from a true opera singer once, and while rock and roll singers have undeniable skill, the world that opened up when he opened his mouth was infinitely more vast and wide. It is a really impressive art, and I think it is a pity that opera seems to have become a joke to the mainstream. Anyway, here's a link to an excerpt that contains “Behold and See”. I'd recommend trying to listen meditatively with headphones so you can hear the true depth of the singer's voice.

Well that took a turn. See you next month.

#update #poetry #March2025

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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For the Star Spangled Banner still tramples on the hireling and the slave in this beautiful land where grace and blood are shed in equal measure.

If we could change that song which so proudly trumpets our stains, I do not think we could choose a better way to represent this country as it is:

A celebration of bloody victory Set to a British drinking song Hatred and scorn hidden In the stanzas left unsung.

And yet, “O beautiful!” for scornèd life Whose hungry, joyous souls Out of deepest pain, and impossible strife Made this country whole! “America! America! God shed His grace on thee!” No less now, we need it how The river feeds the sea.

For we are not the only city — but one of many in the world and time — which lasts only as long as mercy decrees.

The Holy Roman Empire fell, and so could we, even as we sing:

O say, Can you see, The land of the beautiful, America!

Thank you for reading. This poem was written in a distracted fever in between time with family on the fourth of July. It was inspired by my deeply conflicted feelings for my country, which is deeply beautiful and deeply flawed. If you liked it, I'd recommend listening to Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner, or Keb Mo's America the Beautiful.

#poetry

I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you, dear reader, in person, and shake your hand. But perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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A penciled question mark told me all I wanted to know ? about their mind.

#poetry

You do not chase powder or resort experiences. You chase speed, a faster line: the elusive satisfaction of successful execution. Bend the razor, release, land.

It swirls around you in the start gate, in the hours before the race, in the car, on the plane. Slipping down the course during inspection you wonder. How can I be faster? How can I be smoother? Where is the perfect line and what does it feel like?

Warming up, you try to visualize: try to feel your body stretching and bumping and straining in those impossible angles. There are too many variables to know for certain what works or what does not. You can only trust yourself because only you know what the perfect turn really feels like. The sportscasters seem to think it is enough to be able to draw the line on a TV screen, but you know better. It is not enough. You must be able to trace that line in your mind, have an accurate picture not of yourself on a screen, but of being yourself in the future, careening down that pitch at speed, pressed by gravity into a world that cannot be simulated.

In the start line the racers ahead of you plunge into it. That fast but slow icy scraping adrenaline world, where the only sounds are you and the skis, and there is no thinking about your other cares because there is only the course.

You stomp each ski, lean forward and click your poles before settling, wrap your hands on the pole handles one last time. Racer ready...

Swing with gravity and make that razor heavy to cut. Let the weight push you into those impossible angles. Feel it on your back and channel it to the razor and the hill and roll like a bowling ball down the line. Head up, hands forward, struggling to hold that imaginary perfect form in this impossible course. Mistakes are inevitable. Late coming in but you make it up on the under bouncing through a rut almost losing the razor pulling it back just in time to fly over the knoll into the pitch with that hard right footer from inspection but its gone in a flash not as hard as you thought too fast for reflection because the finish is there tucking and willing yourself slipping through the wind over the snow stretching every ligament to break that invisible line and it is over.

The adrenaline fades with your speed and you phase back to reality sliding to a stop. But you never want it to stop. Then come many questions, asked both by you and others, about your time, your technique, how you felt, how they think you looked. But there is a question that runs under all of them and sits in your soul in the car, on the plane, under the hot summer sun of the off-season:

Can I do it again?

#fiction #poetry #skiing

This piece grew from me trying to capture the feeling of downhill ski racing. I was not good enough to come anywhere close to the Olympics, but I was good enough to ski on the same snow as Mikaela Shiffrin at the Vermont State Junior Championships many years ago. And yes, I do still wear the sweatshirt.

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“Be the loudest and you will make it. Do not weigh or consider. Shout often and loud, and everyone will listen.”

“You could be on the screens, re-posted and re-acted. Why wait if no one cares either way? Why think when no one notices?”

“That still voice will only hold you back, and make you poor and un-listened. That shit on TV makes more money than War and Peace. Quality is relative.”

“If you do the opposite: Try to weigh and write only true things, You will be left behind. You will despair in yourself and the world.”

I resist the PR man in my head, but he gets louder and louder in the vacuum left by the profits and success totems I do not have.

He makes me doubt if I am doing it right or being ignorant, like a bestseller who plagiarizes and makes a baby fortune, and believes they are great.

I repeat lines about how writing is not marketing, and not doing it for the money, while still waiting for his big break.

But the big break would not change the truth . . .

I will fight the PR man past death because he is wrong and ridiculous, and I will not add to his pile of plundered life.

#poetry

First, thank you for reading! To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet many of you in person and shake your hands, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands. It is a poor substitute, but it will have to do in this strange world. If you subscribe I promise I will not gum up your inbox.

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