A New Year's Wish

It's snowing lightly and the city is filling with parents and their excited childeren preparing to celebrate the new year.There is a softness to the air as tiny flakes fog the straight lines of tall buildings in the distance. May hard hearts soften too so that year brings less suffering and death to the innocent.

Pillows

In A Week We Hit The Road!!

An Allison Smith Photograph Of Marfa....In Marfa

A Cloud That Thinks Like A Candle

Gym 6:00 AM

Digital Addiction

....or why my iphone reminds me of scotch. 

Hello my name is John and I'm a digiholic. Since I've already seen the inside of more than than a few AA meetings, this child's tussles with cravings that harm is first hand knowledge, bought and paid for. So listen up.

I first knew for sure I had a digi problem yesterday on a round trip drive from Boston to Portland, Maine. Maybe a quarter of a mile down Storrow Drive from our place I reached into my pocket for my iphone and remembered it was still on the night stand by my bed. Damn!! DAMN!!

Storrow is limited access and the rush hour traffic was a crush. No big deal I thought, a half day without AT & T will do me good. This mental handstand had as much self knowledge as a drunk telling himself (and others) that switching to wine proves he doesn't have a problem. After this bit of world class delusion, the withdrawal symptoms really kicked in and the rest of the trip was brutal.

First came the absolute conviction that my wife was trying to reach me with a reminder to get something for her at Whole Foods in Portland.

Next followed a shaky 75 mile stretch nursing a craving to check my email and voice messages. (Yes I've been known to do this and yes doing it can prove fatally stupid.)

And finally as I neared my destination the need for a Google maps fix kept banging on my fevered frontal lobe.

And so it came to pass that after 6 excruciating hours without my drug of choice I was reunited with my sleek slippery app toting addiction lying there lonesome on the table by the bed.

I know I badly need a digital 12 step program. Intervention is inevitable but not today please. I've got to check Facebook.

Crossword Puzzle Inferiority Complex

As someone who has never solved puzzles above the level of connecting the dots on the place mats at the old International House Of Pancakes restaurants, it's intimidating as hell to be married to a woman who can do the Friday New York Times crossword puzzle before she gets up from breakfast.

By Polly Saltonstall....DIFFERING LANDSCAPES

9 a.m. drive to Bangor on back roads. Electric blue sky and the warm sun has melted the silvery net of last night's hard frost everywhere except under under trees, which cast elongated white shadows. Once in Bangor, I walk past a ragged group of people, waiting for a bus perhaps, or jobs, and meet with colleagues in a nearly empty office building. In a borrowed conference room amidst empty brokerage firm offices, surrounded by evidence of the need, we talk about ways to build and sustain communities.

Later that day, heading into Boston, through endless road construction, I try to avoid commuters weaving in their cars from lane to lane to get ahead. At one point a sign says "Squeeze left." Hard not to feel squeezed in this fast-moving, urban setting.

Drove home to Maine wondering if the thermometers reading 70, 69, 68 degrees could possibly be right. Afterall it's December already. I'm wishing for frosty shadows again tomorrow.