How are you creative? I don’t know. I don’t fall out of my chair any more!? I recline and use my thumb to poke out my thoughts instead of using my thoughts to say that I’m dumb. When I do speak I speak wisdom like a child instead of poke fun at other adults for … Continue reading Graduated Elf
Where did your name come from? I used to go around for years, even as early as a month ago, saying Erich is right after Enoch in the genealogy portion of the Old Testament. I learned a few minutes ago from “ye old AI” that it is indeed false. I’m not sure what I did … Continue reading Know Thy Name
What do you love about where you live? I love frogs and crickets. I love wind and cool air. I love when the stars come out of hiding from everywhere. I love the taste of apples. I love the smell of leaves. I love when the sun goes down even over trees. I love shade … Continue reading Lakeland
In the beginning…there were a lot of AND’s…and there were names of places and of people who we’ve heard of before with names we know from songs and books and movies and sometimes real life. Short phrases from the beginning have become elaborate stories interpreting the evidence of imagination inherent in us all leaving unquestionable … Continue reading And Love
I am defeated by love, wriggling in bed on a cross titled “ABANDON” for the third time, but I can’t recall being in love any time before this. Just out of reach is the life I have lived and the pain I have now for having not lived right nor loved right any other time. … Continue reading Love Pain and Resiliance
I have to clock this in now so as not to get a time-out by myself later for forgetting. I don’t need to confess the magnitude of a depraved moment so later my ego can ask everybody to forget. If I choose to make myself accountable by calling myself out there is the possibility that … Continue reading Accountability Is Progress
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months? Look at me Ma, I have above average looks. Look at me Pa, I’m above average at sports. Papa, I have above average intelligence. Gamma, I’m kinda nice. But that was then and you guys are all gone. I’ve been slipping ever … Continue reading No Hands
What TV shows did you watch as a kid? Sitting on a porch, older, thinking back to what I wanted to be when I was a younger man who could still make things happen for myself I remember I wanted to go into advertising. I wanted to write a catch phrase here and a jingle … Continue reading “Who’s the Boss will be back in a moment.”
I’ve made progress. I’ve made about as much progress as my feet do drilling wet sand at the shore of an ocean. As one wave washes free from my wiggling toes any evidence of progress made, if sand were an obstacle and my feet the solution, before the next wave covers my feet again with … Continue reading Wiggle Your Toes
My brother and I, if everything seemed big again where we grew up, beach balls kept us together and one of us had never left. For me, the strongest memories from my childhood are from photographs I saw as a young adult and envisioned as I got older. Natural scenery doesn’t change from year to … Continue reading Around the Peninsula (Interpreting Visual Art – Photography)
What advice would you give to your teenage self? If I could go back and give my teenage self advice I would tell him to continue writing down any ideas, thoughts, poems, songs, jingles, titles, and stories you have throughout your entire life so you know what you were doing, what you were like at … Continue reading The Game of Fatherhood
Eric wants to walk through door number one, a tiny door he would never choose to enter without mounting courage or actually falling from grace. The king riding the tallest steed throughout the kingdom tends to never duck his head to miss the astonishment of onlookers who have only heard him cussing on the turret … Continue reading Sober for Good at the Goose Intervention
It is #family that I will fight for. It is the family that I fight with. It is family that I’d die for. It is family that I mourn with. It is the family I go crazy for. It is family I went crazy with. It is the family that is not a myth. It … Continue reading Tag Words Almost Explained 4
Daddy, where does the world come from? The world comes from lots of places but mostly it comes from the love we have for our children. Why? Because to understand the world you have to first see it through the eyes of a child. But how did it get here? It got here because each … Continue reading Circumventing Science
You were carefree, just being yourself in that photo from long ago, sitting at the table in a fringe coat with long hair and beard smiling like a Japanese bass player with hands clasped at your chin sending reverb over decades in a still shot. You laughed when I showed you the photo saying something … Continue reading I’m Not My Father
“I’ll get around to it,” Jer said when he was asked to go to the laundromat. On his way out a few hours later he looked around for a piece of fruit to eat but quickly gave up, opting instead to stop at Magoos Pizzaria for a slice since it’s on the way. Every time … Continue reading Time – I’ll Get Around To It
The landlady pinches her pennies and polishes her silver while the addict goes through hundreds of dollars in a day to not feel sick. She’s holding her money, he is going through his. They both need it. He needs something else even more than money. He needs more than a name. He needs to take … Continue reading The Landlady
I’m growing old. The eyes I look into remind me that I’m tired. The eyes I avoid remind me that I’m not dead. I’m growing older. The way I’m able to hold my family together and get up on time for work, hold my head up for eight hours and do the things I need … Continue reading Growing Old With Purpose
I told my closest friend the other day that the more I like my own writing it seems the less other people like it. This is far from true since I really absolutely adore my writing and I am the only one who reads it. His response was interesting to me as he stated that … Continue reading Faces of Your Past
When I was younger I always wanted to be a messenger of light. I’d walk around telling an uncle here that his drawing is really good and an aunt there that her basketball game was really fun to watch. But the message I really wanted to deliver was that the chandelier over the staircase was … Continue reading Message of Light
As a grown-up runaway I found out what “state of mind” means in America. The first person I encountered upon crossing the state line into Michigan was a woman opening a door for me saying rather directly and without question “your dad lives in Michigan…” There were no children around, I wasn’t hearing voices, it … Continue reading Home II – Kindness As A State of Mind
It’s fitting that twenty five years ago around this date on Thanksgiving I was in Ireland away from my family. If someone told me twenty five years ago I would one day have a family of my own I wouldn’t have been surprised. If that same person told me I was going to be battling … Continue reading Ireland II – Self Discovery and the Courage to Know
Francis Erich McElroy 