Author: Lucas

Instantly awkward, my hands found surprisingly soft purchase on the love handles of a grinning Colombian whose demeanor implied such an interaction was part and parcel of a standard Thursday. This was my first occasion to explore past the roadside eatery whose cheese-filled arepas are the only thing keeping my weight anywhere near an American…

“I’m a man. But I can change. If I have to. I guess.” Red Green – “The Man’s Prayer” I’ve been thinking about the power of those few words. Creator Steve Smith’s alter-ego Red Green lived this, and so many other pithy bits of wisdom throughout 300 episodes. If you aren’t familiar, Red Green was…

Today we discuss the beautiful tragedy of life itself, a miracle so incomprehensibly, unfathomably overwhelming that it must, ironically, be ignored to be appreciated. It begins, then ends. Some stuff happens in between, and we call that “life”. We enter and leave, in most cases, quite helpless. The similarities between beginning and end of life…

The last rap of the gavel did not echo. What bidders remained were few and stingy, silently colluding scrappers and junk iron haunts mostly, the occasional local Romeo in search of a suitable demo derby car “for the lady” on the odds they run Powder Puff class at the county fair again this year.  Think…

Steel your mind. Disassociate. Observe your emotions instead of living them. It doesn’t sound like living, does it? It did not to me. I avoided it like a four year-old confronted with a bath. For a very long time. The concept of using my noggin in an entirely different manner was not something I could…

Front Range Coffee – located in Kansas City (or one of it’s “boroughs” or whatever, it’s all the same). That’s the setting, a corner coffee store in what looks to be an up-and-coming area of boujee-ness. The signs inside are carved wood with painted letters, like what you see in a national park. The seating…

Language In 2005, I was interning in Washington, DC. It was a happening time, as Hurricane Katrina had just landed in New Orleans. To me, however, I was more interested in something else. John Roberts was going through confirmation hearings to become the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Each day I walked past Supreme…

Existential I keep looking at the word. Looking up the definition. “Grounded in existence or the experience of existence, having being in time and space.” I sit at a desk in my childhood room. Back on the farm again, for a week. Processing. The last sixteen months…what a ride. Walking away from a secure, comfortable…

Mastery is elusive. I’ve mastered nothing. Thirty-nine years of life. I cook well enough not to starve. I code at a beginner’s beginner level. At best I’m a B minus singer, B songwriter, and D guitarist, and I think that’s being generous. As a writer, I can put words together that occasionally make sense. But…