Warren Bluhm's Blog, page 33

The War Prayer

116 years or so after he wrote it, Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer” remains powerfully relevant. For everyone who applauds the New Boss’s bombing of the Middle East today:

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down ...

The search goes on

Somewhere out there are the perfect words, a phrase that unlocks wisdom and peace and understanding and love and no more hassle and din and hatred and discord.

Every day we log onto social media or otherwise check into the world to browse around for those special words.

And in a meme or a big quote with a pretty picture, we pause and say, yes, I like that thought, it needed to be said.

But the fight goes on, and peace skitters away in a cloud of dust and invective.

We are not so ...

In praise of guilty pleasures

“Guilty pleasures” are usually defined as something not-literature or otherwise not-classy that you enjoy anyway, and it feels a little like playing hooky when you read or watch or listen to it. Where does the guilt come from?

My guilty pleasure was comic books, best of all Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, the early days of Marvel Comics when Stan Lee and friends were just getting started. They were my gateway drugs to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson and Georg...

The gift of a try

“I don’t know if I can do this,” you say, but the fact that you voice that thought means you’re willing to try, and that’s the difference.

You didn’t say “I can’t,” and you’re willing to see if you can.

That’s how everything moves forward: by testing your personal limits to find what you can do. More often that not, it’s more than you would have expected.

You can climb that mountain after all, but first you had to say “I don’t know if I can do this” and start, to see how far you could g...

A next time sometime past time

The old man sits, head bent, eyes closed, in his familiar comfortable chair, pen poised above paper bound, blank and waiting.

Suddenly his eyes drift open and his hand begins to scrawl across the page: “I remember this – this is how it was – this is why it is the way it is now – this is what I recall and when and where.”

He scrawls, alive, bringing the past and the memories and the what-is-it to life. And scrawls and scrawls.

And just as suddenly, the words have been written and the...

People want peace

There it was, in the middle of a writing exercise where the mentor said “number a page from 1 to 25 and write 25 sentences as fast as you can, beginning with the words “I wish …”

In the middle of things like “I wish I exercised more” and “I wish I would finish my novels” and such, there it was:

I wish people didn’t hate so much.

It seems we are so quick to anger, so quick to take offense, so quick to find fault and even evil in other people, so quick to hate.

So here is my plea for p...

The WouldaShouldaCoulda pays a visit

Regrets? I’ve had a few, but then again …

They’re right about how the things you didn’t try loom larger in your memory than the things you did — I would have treated some people better, and I would have spent more time thinking through certain things.

The WouldaShouldaCoulda circled three times and settled into a ball like a fat coyote (or would have if there were ever such a thing as a fat coyote). It looked me in the eyes with a disinterested expression, which is odd because I’d always h...

Don’t worry, be writing

“Writing doesn’t always have to know where it’s going …

“And so, in order to be a good writer, I have to be willing to be a bad writer. I have to be willing to let my thoughts and images be as contradictory as the evening firing its fireworks outside my window. In other words, let it all in — every little detail that catches your fancy. You can sort it out later — if it needs any sorting.”

— Julia Cameron
The Right To Write

How to handle an officious Self-Editor

Snooger, a snoggle, woke up to a blazing sun. Snoggle Swamp was hot and wet this morning, which was nothing new. After all, it was a swamp.

(Uh oh — you didn’t hear this, dear reader, because you can’t hear what’s in my head, but the Self-Editor is also awake, trying to form the exact right words to put down so that Snooger and his swamp appear perfectly formed on the page.

But that isn’t the point of this exercise, is it? No, my fingers are supposed to fly across the page and whatever...

Zola and a parting of souls

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime shot, a moment of joy captured by an inexpensive camera that had no business taking a photo this precious — Willow The Best Dog There Is and her cousin Zola romping with wild abandon across a field.

We took our almost-year-old golden retriever puppy with us to visit a friend and colleague whose golden was six months old. The resemblance between the two pups was amazing, and a quick comparing of notes revealed we’d adopted from the same breeder, so our girls were ...