healing

Having It All

Railroad tracks in Texas

Somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, July 8, 2010 »Buy This Photo!«

[Longform, 1600 words and counting. Brutal, true, up-lifting, possibly unfair, almost certainly transparent under hindsight. (We’ll see!) There’s a lot of personal history here. This is one I do feel good about and recommend. – JHF]

What Would Buddha Do?

a muddy road

The state of things in Taos, amply illustrated here

My brother Bill has cancer in both lungs. My siblings and I are at least mildly surprised he’s lasted this long, given his decades-long history of methamphetamine addiction and smoking cigarettes to boot. But I know little about him, really. My natural sympathies are tempered by the fact that I’ve been far too close to [...]

The End of Madness

Johnny on the steps in Middle River, MD.

Middle River, MD in early spring

What miracle is this? Too new, too fresh… It probably helped to get as sick as I just did, coughing up bloody gunk and unable to sleep, imagining the worst, a cascade of fear of everything from leaving the wreckage of a life for her to clean up to ever-diminished circumstances if I lived. Sometimes [...]

Vipaka Blues

Taos Plaza at Xmas

Taos Plaza the other night without a soul around

Even more editing, especially at the end. – JHF Other than the truck, I don’t remember many details of the murder up in Questa sometime after we arrived in ’99. Not the sort of thing to savor, obviously. It happened just outside a bar. The perpetrator used his wheels to crush the victim, back and [...]

Luck of the Damned

woman by the Rio Grande

Watching the Rio Grande rolling toward the sea

A lot of things are coming into clearer focus these days. What’s important, you might say. A healthy dose of universal truth, accepting that I’m part of something greater than myself and finally relaxing a little bit. I certainly didn’t get this far on my own power, did I? We always think we do, as [...]

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