Tag Archives: Soul Mining Series

A House Is Not a Motel: On Endurance, Belonging and What Comes After Survival

The problem is not that endurance failed. The problem is that it worked. I can teach students how to be successful. I cannot, apparently, teach them how to be happy. The same system produced a career, a large house, freedom, and children strong enough to leave. What it cannot manufacture is home, because home requires another free person, and another free person cannot be built. This is an essay about what comes after survival, when getting up was supposed to be the beginning of something, and turned out to be the thing I knew how to do.

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And This Is Sid: Witness as Co-Authorship

Call Me Womble said I am the baker, and my life is the bread. Then Ian pointed out the obvious problem: there are other people in the bakery. This is an essay about my friend Dave, who stole my stories, helped produce them, blamed me when he died, and kept editing afterwards. Personality happens between people. Being seen is not a passive event. Usefulness asks what I can do for you; witness asks whether I am here. We make one another. We do not own one another.

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