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This Is Not the World I Wanted to Leave for You: Reflections on Legacy, Loss, and the Future We Shape

I have been thinking a great deal lately about living and dying, and about the strange, stubborn human hunger to leave something meaningful behind. The faces of those I have known who have already passed return to me in quiet moments, and I find myself watching those who are, even now, nearing the end of their own stories. I also include my final braided prairie knot in that wondering. In the background of these thoughts runs a deeper worry, a shadow that lengthens each day: the growing political instability that presses in on the goodness of life and threatens the fragile hope we carry in our personal lives. I wonder, in darker hours, if all the labor, all the love, all the sacrifice we invest in this world will ever prove to be worth it. And then, as if called back from the edge of despair, I remember what my friend, mentor, and teacher, Dr. Howard Stein, told me as he lay dying at age 91.

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Scratch My Twitch on Boles.tv

The future now is here and you can watch it live, weekdays, on Boles.tv! Yes, Janna and I have taken the deep leap into the world of live streaming and we’re here to tell you all about it. The most interesting thing about going live each day is the idea that social media is really nothing compared to social broadcasting. You are your own station. You are your own dream stream.

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As Holidays Fade, Culture Disappears

As we step into, and away from, malleable malfeasance, we cannot but help to linger on what is, and what has been lost. In the United States, we have cheapened our culture with vulgarity, and purposeful misfortune, and cunning, evil, unrest. We have also abandoned a right celebration of our most beloved holidays.

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American Gargoyle: A Cloven Hoof in the Homeland (The Script)

I started a new podcast on July 18, 2016 called “David Boles: Human Meme” and I have had some great luck with episodes like Of Wealth and the Starless Eye and Omne Trium Perfectum: The Rule of Three and De Anima and the Demon Soul, but today’s podcast — American Gargoyle: A Cloven Hoof in the Homeland — has taken off on a life of its own, and that’s precisely what you hope to have happen in a podcast about human memetics and the how and why we learn and share knowledge!

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Never Speak to the Actors!

There’s an old, weary, chestnut in the theatre — that deserves to be burned alive, eaten whole, pooped out and buried in the deep blue sea and then never spoken of again — that goes a little something like this, when directors say to Playwrights: “Never Speak to the Actors!”

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Could You Come Up with a Thousand Dollars in Cash Today?

I was talking to a financial planner friend of mine the other day, and one of the standardized questions he asks clients and potential clients is if they had to, could they come up with a thousand dollars in one day for an emergency?

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Alicia Silverstone and Bird Feeding Bear Blu

As of late, my little man Chaim Yosef Davidescu has a neat little trick that he performs at the dinner table — well, at the dinner high chair, anyhow. He starts by putting something in his mouth — cracker, grape, or otherwise. Most of the time he will give it a good chewing and swallow. Sometimes, however, he will realize that he suddenly wants a drink from his sippy cup and so instead of continuing to process his current food, he pauses and just takes it out of his mouth. The trick comes if I happen to be near him when he makes this decision and he juts out his hand, partially chewed food in it, toward me as an offering. I have told him on a number of occasions that his Tati is just not interested in eating partially chewed food and that he is neither child nor bird.

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Facebook Gets Student Arrested

A man slowly ascends the stairs of a tall building. He has an assault rifle strapped to his back and carries a megaphone in one hand. When he gets to the roof he looks down on the hundreds of people walking down the street and calls for their attention. He watches carefully as they gather around in the street below and when just enough people are listening he lifts the assault rifle in one hand and puts the megaphone to his mouth and says, “Ladies and gentlemen… I own an assault rifle illegally!” Within minutes he is arrested and nobody is surprised. Why then would someone do the online equivalent and provide photographic evidence to the world, including the police that eventually arrested said someone?

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Writing for Yourself: You are the Center of the Panopticon

Too many writers write for other people.  They write for lovers or lost hope or for an unknown, future, audience they hope will like them — when they should really only be writing for themselves.  Every writer is the core of their confounding world.  We are the center of our Panopticonic lives.

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Memories of June 11, 1994

I have lots of strong and positive memories tied to the date June 11, 1994. This is despite the fact that I do not recall anything about the date itself. Rather, it is all to do with a cassette tape I received in the mail in the spring of 1995 that changed my life for the better and has been with me in one form or another since then.

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