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In classic tarot iconography, the Fool is always represented accompanied by a small dog. On the Fool’s Journey I embarked upon, reluctantly and fearfully, back in May 2019, that dog was Kyri. I had rescued him eight months earlier in Portland, but he would rescue me daily through the 93 days of that open-ended road odyssey.
It was a journey that would carry me more than 20,000 miles across half a continent and through 14 states.
Read more"I am a writer. Period." I wasn't so sure about that while writing The Bard of Bryn Doon, which was such an intensely challenging experience that I was seriously tempted to give up. Often. And not only on this book, but on *all* books. Somehow, though, I managed to get through it, and I now think that my newest book may be my best yet! I guess I'm going to keep a writing after all!!
Read moreIt took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer "I-I think I'm gay" into the phone, then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.
Read moreIt took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer 'I-I think I'm gay' into the phone and then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.
That was my first coming out; there would be four more: at 39 when I reluctantly dropped the 'gay' label, at 43 when I married a woman and came out as no-longer-gay to my gay friends, at 50 when I lost the 'married' label, and at 54 when I came out all over again as a gay man.
But the first 'coming out' is always the toughest.
Read moreI have turned my life upside down once again: I have sold everything I own (not for the first time) and jammed the essentials (including my dog, Kyri) into my Prius and have taken off for parts unknown. Welcome to Week 1 of My Fool’s Journey, carrying me from Portland, OR to Billings, MT.
Read more“‘Portal land,’ my friend Sander jokingly remarked back in late 2017 when I told him I was moving to Portland. As it turned out, it was no joke... You see, I’ll be leaving Portland on or around May 28. Likely for good.”
Read moreWhether it’s historically, spiritually or metaphysically, November 11 carries much meaning for many people. It carries a particularly personal significance for me: That was the date of my bar mitzvah. Yet that my bar mitzvah occurred on 11/11 wouldn’t be the only measure of the day’s import, as I relate in this excerpt from my memoir.
Read moreWhen a powerful intuitive impulse prompted me to cross into the US from my native Canada on July 9, 1997, I couldn't know that not only would I not be going back, but that 21 years later I would be on my way to becoming a US citizen; a dual Canadian/US citizen, to be precise. Today, on the 21st anniversary of my "accidental immigration," I recount how I got here all those years ago, in a story excerpted from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir.
Read moreThere’s a difference between “wanting to know,” which derives from a healthy spirit of inquiry, and “needing to know,” which too often generates more anxiety than it eases.
Read moreFew of the stories I share about my father in my memoir are flattering. Not only was he physically and emotionally absent, he wasn’t even my natural father. Yet I carry his name, and of my three fathers, he is the only one I ever think of as "Daddy." So on this Father's Day, a half-century after his death, I share this tale of love and reconciliation….
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