September 25, 2026

What the Spray Allowed

On the night of the fourteenth of September, 1997, in the first squall band of a blow that never got a name, a man went over the rail of a shrimp boat working the inside grounds off Cameron, Louisiana. The boat was the Coralee B, sixty-two feet of wood and rust out of Cameron, named for the captain’s mother. Junius Hebert was the man: twenty-nine, out of Hackberry, the lead deckhand, with a wife and two little girls and a laugh that carried over the engine. The sea that took him did not splash. He was working the winch on the starboard side, and the first green sea stood on the deck amidships, and the second one came over the rail where he was standing, and when the deck cleared the winch was running empty and Junius was gone.

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July 26, 2026

The Occupied Space from The Empty Space

There are two books on my desk tonight. One is thin, secondhand, printed in 1968, and it has followed me from apartment to apartment for fifty years the way certain arguments follow a person: quietly, patiently, refusing to concede. The other arrived this week in a shipping box with my name on the cover, and it exists because of the first. It is the answer, finally long enough. The thin book is Peter Brook’s The Empty Space, the most quoted stage doctrine of its century, and mine is The Occupied Space: Sixty Years After The Empty Space, and it is the longest answer I have ever written to anything: twelve chapters, a coda, and a half century of rehearsal rooms behind every page. This is the story of the quarrel, the trial, and the answer, told the way I can only tell it here, at home, at length.

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December 11, 2021

Best of David Boles, Blogs: Vol. 12 (2021) is Available to Buy Now!

It’s that time of the year again — yes, time for us to ask for the pleasure of your continued, kind, support for this blog by joyously buying our eBook — Best of David Boles, Blogs: Vol. 12 (2021) — to show your support so we may continue to publish this blog without advertising while still being able to cover our yearly, ongoing, online publication costs that include server space, hosting fees, and bandwidth payments.

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April 6, 2016April 13, 2016

Surviving Shingles: A Four-Month Esprit of Agony

Today, I am pleased to share with you — Volume 7 in my continuing “Boles Book for…” learning precis series called — “Surviving Shingles: A Four-Month Esprit of Agony!”

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February 3, 2016January 1, 2026

The Narcissistic Mother

The Narcissistic Mother is a classically-defined psychological condition that infects, and ruins, many mother-daughter and mother-son relationships. The tenets of such a motherhood are created equally in the evil dyad of the purposeful and the poisoning.

My new book — Mother Narcissus — is autobiographical fiction inspired by the Narcissistic Mother meme, and it has taken me over a half-century to write because the confronted themes and unconditional threats are not insoluble and are always voluble. Soon enough, the day comes when one must stand up to stare down all the vicious demons, no matter how else they are perceived by others.

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July 29, 2015

Here’s a Boles Book for Cheap Holiday Decor!

Hi there! I’m pleased to announce I’ve written my second “Boles Book for…” this Summer! The newest book is called — Boles Book for Cheap Holiday Decor — and while the title suggest frugality, I promise you there’s nothing cheap in this book… except for the keen ways to save money during the holiday decorating season!