Still Thinking

Dear Senior Burns, I lost my faith in the power of words a long time ago.  People who play music are allowed to sit on their own porch and enjoy the guitar. Photographers are allowed to take photographs they show nobody. Painters apply to canvas and stash them or give them away fine and willy nilly. But to write words means to make money. Words are not to be enjoyed, they are to be monetized. That's the modern ethos. Words are to be bound and sold. If not, they are worthless. Leaves on autumn grounds to be walked over or thrown away. I've tried to fight this ethos at every bend in the road. And, man, it's an uphill battle. Too few believe in the value of words anymore. Words as morsels of life is a bygone notion.  Would you believe, Senior Burns, that writing this nonsense to you right here actually rekindled my love for words again? More than anything else in years. How silly is that? How small must I be to find pleasure in something so simple? We're not doing anything

Dear Senior Burns, I despaired recently upon learning these posts reached a wider audience than the intended none. Truly, I believed we were alone here -- just me and you, Senior Burns, slavering at words like a meat-head pumping iron in a mirror. The only problem, keeping with the metaphor, I forgot that the internet is a giant Gold's Gym: mirrors impinge from all sides. Truly again, Senior Burns, we are not alone. My responsive choice became to either abandon or embrace the available space -- public mirrors and all. As you can see, I've chosen the latter, typing furiously as veins press the edges of my strained neck like prank-snakes in a pillow case. That final metaphor got lost. Here be the dietary bits I relished over Spring Break -- morsels that I cannot fathom anyone else giving a whipless dollop about. WORDS: I polished off Stephen King's 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption in two sittings, fully convinced by the end that Andy Dufresne's pa