My life bleeds from the pen in blood-red ink staining paper with great swathes of sorrow and towering pillars of joy. I live passionate in this life, laughing and crying, not knowing what lies ahead, remembering what lies past. I capture emotions with the lens of my mind and send them pounding through my veins to plant themselves in my heart where they fill me and inform me and identify me. When I take up pen and write, I liberate my emotions to take me…and shake me and drain me ‘til all that’s left is a sentimental memory of a time, a place, a love; a loss, a tear, a smile.
Joy is half of me, sorrow is half of me, continually emptied, continually refilled from a ream of life lived well, from an inkwell of life lived full. My pen writes of you when I write of me. Our stories are the same, our words the same, our ink the same. When you read my words, you read my life. Cry with me, laugh with me, as I do when I write of me, as I do when I write of you. When you read my words, you read your life.
I am half of you, you are half of me, we flow from the same inkwell. Cry with me, laugh with me.
My Biography
The U.S. Navy was my life for twenty-seven years. Prior to joining the Navy, I traveled the world with my parents while dad served in the U.S. Air Force. In 1959, my mom smuggled me abroad from Homestead, Florida and gave birth to me in Ankara, Turkey.
My parents unwittingly nurtured my lifelong love affair with literature and writing; mom rose early on Sundays so she could beat me to the crossword puzzle; she occasionally let me win. Dad didn’t mind, as long as the rest of the newspaper remained unwrinkled. They both advised me to put my books away, turn off the flashlight, and go to sleep so I would grow up big and strong and become a famous writer. I’m still working on that last bit.
I’m sentimental, moved to tears by beauty in all her forms, and introspective. I fancy poetry above all things, write of my life as an Air Force brat and career Sailor, and of my observations of human nature throughout the world I have traveled from birth.
The world is my hometown, and Saint Leonard, Maryland my current residence where I live with my wife of thirty-six years, Jayne Michiko Ono, and Sachiko, our Hound/Lab mix. I can’t mention my dogs without also mentioning Misty, Toby, Yoshi, and Yukio all of whom we look forward to seeing again beneath the Rainbow Bridge. There'd better be a Rainbow Bridge.
I self-published my novel, Honey Ko, in March 2020. I’m busily engaged in writing my second novel, Dancing With Orange Blossoms, and outlining a third novel, William Goodfellow. My writing has been published in Community Orange Magazine and The Sundial Review. A collection of my personal essays was published in the anthology Four Feet Down. Writing isn’t an intellectual exercise, but an emotional release. I hope you will enjoy my writing. If it touches you, please let me know. Thank you, Will