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  • Greatest Influences: A List

    I’ve read many self-help books in uncertainty and in leisure. Entertainment lies in piecing together the argument of how we may bear fruit on our lives by discourse from the Hellenists to Influencers. Although, an intentional outside opinion can be helpful, I find implementing nuances derived from literature vicariously often more impactful. This list conglomerates some of the most influential books in my life, yet none are self-help books for that very reason. 

    1. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 

    Though heavy with social commentary, the main perspective I harvested from this beautiful satire was the ability to create humor out of dark realities. After much practice, I’ve become a much happier person fighting off daily monotony or life’s anxieties with a quick joke or a sardonic perspective shift. 

    1. Elbow Room – Daniel C. Dennett 

    I originally read this book for a class, the philosophy of which has little to do with the lesson I took from it. I played with Dennet’s idea of “wiggle room” in my head – of graying lines. I applied his thought process and thought experiment to ideas I previously held strictly as black and white, finding that most beliefs can hold common ground in your life; in fact, seldomly do things appear so uncompromising. 

    1. Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink

    Jocko’s style of stoicism reconciles the idea of an aggressive personality with self control – something I attempt to live up to in my everyday life. With this style, I face myself and the externalities of my life head on; with honesty and humility. 

    1. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut 

    Almost a Great Gatsby in reverse, Eliot Rosewater develops a conscience and dispenses great sums of money to people he meets and many he doesn’t after leaving New York. His blinding generosity, even despite those who appear to take advantage of him, inspires some of my own kindness. It has come to lend me an extremely socialist opinion on living in a society. For, if we do not take care of each other, how are we to call ourselves one?

    1. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

    If I’m being honest, the plot of Mrs. Dalloway remains one of the blandest I’ve ever read, but important to my life nonetheless. Woolf’s writing taught me a release for mental blocks, for decision making, and gave me a tool in crucial times to attend to my emotions without making myself a slave to them.

  • Essential Sci-Fi: Guardians of Time by Poul Anderson

    In the six decades since its publication, Anderson’s collection of short stories still gives perspectives of the past, both 20th century and beyond, presenting the kind of forward-thinking social commentary that developed into normalcy more recently. This alone makes it as much time machine as it is time travel saga, transporting the reader around the world from pre-historic to the edges of prediction. Its genius lies in the nuanced definitions of the known world and Poul’s tangled yet logically sound ball of yarn that makes up the unknown.

    If that alone doesn’t strike interest, Guardians of Time (AKA: Time Patrol) is still one of the most captivating and cleverly crafted series of stories I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Reading it for the first time, I could hardly bear to put the book down; rereading it produced the exact same longing. For as long as it has born fruit for its readers, I imagine it will continue to bring wisdom from the past and project ideas for their future in a digestible, exciting way.

  • A Moonlit Garden

    Foreword: I have wrestled with myself for about two months now as to whether or not I would share this story with you all. I wrote this as I pondered potential edits and revisions for my “Midnight Rose”, and when the story came fully to fruition I was, admittedly, somewhat displeased with the results. I may yet make another version of this story which I can find more entertaining, but given our current situation I wanted to release more content that I hope you find entertaining. In these awkward times we must find other ways of connecting.
    That said, I appreciate your patience with me as I indulge myself in the perpetuation of this little fantasy. Though it may not set itself completely apart from the original inspiration, I hope you enjoy it all the same. The original poem came to me as I thought about rewriting an old assignment from school and from there this developed. After all, “The thorns of the past can become the buds of the future.”

    All the best,
    Josh

    Pages: 1 2 3

  • Static

    I count all my hair, 
stinging with electricity, 
ozone on my sleeve. 
A peat bog with water waist deep, 
moss on down the halls. 
Bouncing a voice long gone, 
“How do we breathe?” 
Escaping as we speak. 

Beautiful words confine me, 
a misery of mystery. 
Restless at the seams. 
A prison so lost friends won’t find me. 
How does this compare? 
Another kind of exposure. 

  • Tender Skin

    When the rising of the morning wakes you,
    and the catching of your breath takes you
    to the far and the fetched;
    through those places
    let your heart pass
    and your head wander. 
    In this way, memories made sweet
    shape all the fonder.

  • Wisdom’s Fruits

    Aimless through the black and white,
among the grainy tops of midnight.
Wander through clear cut lines 
of staunch lit dreams and windless vines. 
Crawl and stretch toward open whites, 
blue or hazel of open eyes. 
Crossing through emboldened text.
Reap and sow tears of crying minds. 
Black and white, 
back and forth; 
whose hope is it to read the signs? 
Among the fields stemming dreams of height,
while as to day, they fall to night. 
Within words so far away
only disbelief will fill my fright. 
Harvested here by those astray,
the tree of wisdom, from leaves that fell away. 

  • Tripping

    Where wild ones play.
In a jungle of laughing and longing.
Built over time
on overgrown mossy ground.
Filled with a soundtrack
of cackles in the dark. 
Strange and unrecognizable to them.
Though very much alone. 
Sounds to which 
they've kissed goodbye
all night long. 
Until trees fall and flowers wilt.
All noise fades. 
A cold, bare apartment
called home.
Never to see each other again.
So it feels.
Something she would call dramatic. 
To say the least.
Sometimes the most
better left unsaid.

  • The Midnight Rose

    A rose in the garden 
 
 grows ever sweeter. 

 Lovely white petals 

 soften a thorny demeanor. 

 Though twinkling between twilights 

its pale beauty casts gloom; 

 a baneful silk shadow 

 by light of the moon. 

 Safe in the small hours, 

 but deadly at dawn: 

 the buds draw in, 

 the thorns begin to yawn. 

 If stung in the light 

 there's no time to feel sick. 

 The petals glow red 

 as blood from the prick. 

 Forget your family, your life, and your friends. 

 Off to a new garden 

 you roam to make amends. 

 To his mistress, the moon, 

 the rose does take. 

 Another stranger - a sacrifice - 

for his mistake. 

 You won't wonder or think. 

 Your mind has gone. 

 As you lie and wait 

 for the last light has shone. 

 When daylight has faded; 

 now covered in dirt. 

 You twist and tangle 

 as stems with white flowers, 

 from your skin, 

begin to spurt.

  • Laced

    soon you'll see 
where lovers dreamed 
dust in the air 
smell of the free 
dreamers call home 
come back to me 
from last light gleamed 
come back to me

  • Catharsis

    My fears do I confess? 
Your tears do I let drown. 
Drops within a sea. 
Times I let you down.