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To Old Friends

25 Jul 2025 by KRAG

to these old eyes
we none of us have aged
and all are as when first we met

though days and years
and decades all
have trundled past our feast

though unforgiving fate
has called a few away
and left their seats unfilled

and loft-bound bitterness
and joy have played for us
their varied minstrel tunes

it’s just the failing candlelight
that limns us each
in haloed wisps of age

for if I squint I once again
can see us clear and bright
with vibrant youth

all straining ‘gainst the slips
and hungry soon
to master dreamed-of hopes

so charge your glass
and be upstanding so
that we may raise a toast

to all we’ve known
and all we’ve loved
and all that yet remains ahead

for life with all its sorrowed pain
is better lived than not
and better still
with friends beside

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Old Influencers

20 Jul 2025 by KRAG

Having been pleasantly surprised by my recent re-read of a sci-fi/fantasy series I’d loved as a teen, I decided to extend this run of good luck and re-read another series that was influential to my own writing style (when I eventually got one).

I first crossed paths with Roger Zelazny’s works—both short form and long—in high school. It was before I’d read much fiction at all, and thus I did not have a lot of knowledge to bring to the experience. Despite this lack (or perhaps because of it), Zelazny’s stories and novels stuck with me, shaping my appreciation of the written word from then on. Zelazny was one of the triumvirate of authors who influenced my youthful enthusiasm for fiction, along with grandmasters Anne McCaffrey (a major influence, I discovered last week) and, of course, Ray Bradbury.

Each of these authors drew a different type of appreciation from me. McCaffrey’s prose was not what stayed with me, but rather her characters and their relationships, which were crucial to the workings of her plots. In considering Bradbury, I admit that none of his novels stuck with me, but his short fiction! Oh, what magic I found there. The books that collected his short works in a thematic whole—The Illustrated Man or The Martian Chronicles—were treasure boxes to read and re-read.

Roger Zelazny, though, held a special place in my pantheon, and not just because he was the only one of the three I actually met. Back in the ’70s, I didn’t have the breadth of experience to understand what I so enjoyed about his works, but yesterday, as soon as I began his Nine Princes in Amber, I could pinpoint it precisely. Where McCaffrey’s prose was straightforward, and Bradbury’s was as near to poetry as one can get in prose, Zelazny’s writing has a distinctive “voice,” matched to the mind of the character, and integral to the tenor of the storyline. As I began this book, I heard echoes of Hemingway, of Chandler and Hammett, along with the flow and descriptive power that was Zelazny’s own. That “voice,” that touch of the hard-boiled detective, was a crucial element of the character in that opening chapter—Corwin, a man out of space and time, without memories, must navigate a dangerous world filled with people bent on his demise. It was all fedoras and noir on silver nitrate and razor-sharp repartee and chiaroscuro lighting until, amazingly, subtly, color crept into the world along with Corwin’s recovered memories, and the “voice” shifted as well, matching again the mindset of the Corwin’s evolution.

I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Zelazny in the early ’90s, after I’d made my first professional-level short story sale. It was at a sci-fi convention here in Seattle, and I was trying to learn as much as I could about the craft, and meet as many “pros” as I could (a terribly difficult task for an introvert like me), but I’d been met with nothing but condescension and rudeness from nearly every established writer I approached. But I put that aside as I’d come primarily because Zelazny was a featured guest. I’d heard him read from his forthcoming book (A Night in the Lonesome October), and I’d brought my limit of three books for him to autograph (my beat-up vintage copies of the two-volume Amber omnibus and a dog-eared paperback copy of Four for Tomorrow).

Having been scorched by other authors at the convention, I expected a perfunctory meeting at the signing table, but I was determined to let Mr. Zelazny know how influential his works had been on my own nascent attempts as a writer. Instead of just signing my old books and moving on with a nod, he asked if I was submitting my work; I said yes, and that I’d been in a recent issue of a small professional magazine. He knew the magazine, actually had back issues, and wrote down my name so he could look up my story. After all the bristles and cold-shoulders I’d received that weekend, a kind word from a writer so important to me was a gift dearer than rubies. Did he really have back issues of a small-run magazine? Was he really going to read my story? I don’t know; he might have merely been encouraging me, a gentlemanly gesture to a budding young man who had kept three of his books safe and secure for a score of years. Still, I like to think he might have.

Reading these old favorites again, though, now with my older, wiser eyes, I feel the old desire to craft words renewed. I want to finish reading all of these titles I’ve pulled from the stacks, but after that . . . after that, I think I have work to do.

k

Posted in Creativity, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Finding My Wellspring

13 Jul 2025 by KRAG

A friend asked the hive-mind for book suggestions—preferably science-fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction—to flesh out her summer reading list and (naturally) she got more titles than she could probably read in a year. I tossed in one title I’d read recently; it was less “spec-fic” and more what I’d call “magic realism,” but I had found it delightful and passed the title¹ along.

In perusing the suggestions from others, I saw a mix of genre classics along with (what I assumed were) newer titles. I used to read nothing but sf/f novels—they were my introduction into fiction, back in the late ’60s/early ’70s—but over time, for reasons (painful or practical), I drifted away from the genre, and have zero experience with many of the newer authors.

There was one particular suggestion, however, that caught my eye, It was a title² of which I’d not thought in decades, even though I adored the series when I was young. I was in my teens when the books were first published and I devoured them, thankful there was only a year between release dates.

In recent years, I’ve occasionally gone back to re-read some old favorites, but that proved a dicey proposition. At sixteen, seventeen, I had no comprehension of—much less appreciation for—writerly things like structure, characterization, world-building, foreshadowing, allusion, or pacing. If you gave me a brisk plot and a compelling reason to turn the page, I was all yours. Going back to those old, familiar titles led, more often than not, to disappointment. Clunky dialogue, predictable plots, heavy-handed setups, wooden characters, and banal prose were common, and that’s before considering the rampant sexism and gender dynamics of the period.

But, oh, I did so love these books, this series, this world. So I gave the first in the series a try.

What I found within shocked me.

It’s not that it is bad; far from it. Yes, the author has some annoying (to me) quirks, and is inordinately fond of multi-syllabic adverbs, but the characters are full and distinct, the world has a long and detailed history that affects the current action, the social structure is coherent, strong with rituals and patterns, and there is humor and passion and drama and risk aplenty.

What shocked me, though, were the echoes I recognized between these books and my own. Understand, between the time I read these books and the time I began writing fiction, two decades had passed. When I was writing my own books, I never thought back on these titles, not for inspiration, not at all.

And yet, as I re-read these old books, I see in them the seeds of the worlds I have built. From the psychic connections along ley lines in “Spencer’s Peace” and my Ploughman Chronicles, to the bonding between riders and walkers in The Fallen Cloud Saga, to the convolutions of time travel in Unraveling Time, here in these books lie the kernels from which my own books grew. These books, this series, they are my source, my wellspring.

All writers, I believe, are influenced by the writings of others. We’re all, as Stephen King once said, like “milk in the fridge,” picking up flavors from whatever we’re near, accreting reverberations from the artistry of those we admire. But to find so many thematic origins in one place, well, it’s like finding a loved one, long-lost, long-forgotten.

I’m exceedingly glad I took a chance on these old friends, and I will definitely read the six or seven titles that I read when I was a boy. I feel a need, after this difficult year, for an infusion of youthfulness and hope, and these books, for me, flow with those gifts.

k

¹ The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods
² Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey, first in the Dragonriders of Pern series

Posted in Creativity, Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Discerning Friendship—One Introvert’s Take

01 Jul 2025 by KRAG

I’ve never had a lot of friends. My cadre of close friends in school could usually be counted on one hand. Even now my FB “Friends” list barely hits triple digits, and few of those are close friends. It takes a while for me to form a friendship with someone new, both because of my innate stand-offishness, and because—I’ll admit—I’m an acquired taste.

Despite this, I do have some close friendships, and it’s not surprising that, now that I’m in my 60s, most of those are measured in decades. However, it’s a fact that over time people change, and that sometimes relationships require work, need recalibration, or simply cease to function altogether. It is also a fact that sometimes those troublesome changes are in me and are not my friend’s responsibility.

Recent events—and the reality that I and my cohort have begun to grey and stiffen—have led me to take a long look at the nature of my friendships, primarily to understand why some have begun to falter, but also to understand any changing dynamics, and to set my expectations at realistic levels. I need to know on whom I can rely.

I am a 100% introvert and was also the “invisible” child in my family, the kid my parents rarely had to worry about. As a result, I’ve always been self-reliant (often to a fault), I rarely ask for help (even when it is needed), and I navigate my social world in such a way as to create the least disturbance in my wake. This last one means a few things: I strive to take genuine interest in my friends’ lives and activities, to be generous with my time and resources, to be a reliable supporter and helper in time of need, and to be a relatively drama-free addition to the friendship.

And thus my issue, for when I do ask for help, I really need it, and when I raise concerns of a perceived imbalance, it’s serious. However—perhaps due to my pattern of self-sufficiency, or because I have misjudged the reciprocity of the relationship—responses are often muted and my requests easily shrugged off.

It is this level of reciprocity, I have discovered, that is a critical factor. Now that I recognize this, it is easy to see the difference it makes. Does this friend reach out to see how I’m doing? Do they express curiosity about things that are on my interest list but not on theirs? How well does the other know me, and how well do I know them?

In many friendships, this is irrelevant. Our interactions are cordial, conversations rarely dive deep, and we have large gaps in our knowledge of one another. But we enjoy our visits and interact over mutual interests. We’re not close, but we’re definitely friends.

In close relationships—my inner circle, if you will—my expectations are higher. Conversations are often more deep and detailed, and my knowledge about the other’s life is more extensive. I expect we have greater consideration for one another, a deeper knowledge of likes and dislikes. And I expect that we have a strong mutual concern for each other’s well-being.

When difficulties arise (I now realize), it is when this reciprocity is not present in what I had considered to be a close friendship. It is here that my expectations have proven to be too high, which has led to disappointment, strife, and ruptures in relationships.

Social relationships and etiquette are fuzzy things with few definitive boundaries. They are usually founded on tacit understanding of the rules, rules discussed more in the breach than in the observance, and they are rife with particulars unique to the friends involved.

But it is neither fair nor reasonable for me to expect a friend to do all for me that I might do for them. One can rarely know the depth of a friendship until it is tested, but I believe I have found a tool that I can use to better judge my position as seen from another’s perspective.

Friendships can be marvelously resilient or shockingly fragile. They can survive long neglect or require constant maintenance. None of these traits are any better or worse than the others; they are not flaws, but mere attributes of the relationship. Denying their existence is fruitless, but while we must accept them as facts, it does not mean they are satisfactory to our needs.

The key—for me anyway—is being honest about the relationship; that way, I can avoid critical misunderstandings and failed expectations. My hope is that I can avoid mistakes such as I’ve made in the past and the heartache that often came with them.

 

k

 

Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Patient 3914744

28 Jun 2025 by KRAG

On Tuesday, I said two words that I had never spoken to anyone before.

“I’m scared,” I told Matt.

Matt was a giant. At 6’8” tall, with a firefighter’s physique, he was an imposing presence. He’d had to duck to enter our front door, and when he knelt down in front of the couch on which I sat, to apply the electrodes to my chest and arm, he still towered over me. A phalanx of men surrounded me, all of similar build but of mere mortal height. The cul-de-sac was filled by a massive fire truck that dwarfed the ambulance, both with red lights spinning, engines purring at poised rest. My wife had been on the doorstep, directing them toward me—“Upstairs, and to the right”—and was now providing one of the human-sized EMTs with info on what had preceded our call to 911. But despite Matt’s outsized frame, he was a calming presence, a rock of competence and confidence, spiced with a soupçon of humor that evoked a brotherly trust within my rapidly pounding heart.

Of course, I’d been scared before, but I’d never admitted it aloud, in the moment. Car wrecks, sudden job loss, a rock climbing accident, nearly losing a hand in a newspaper web press, a myriad injuries and mishaps, a televised viola solo in Vaughan-Williams’ “London” Symphony No. 2—I was no stranger to fear, but never had I given voice to that emotion, that primal, skin-tightening, gut-loosening feeling that strikes out of the storm like St. Elmo’s Fire.

This time, though, with a kernel of blue-white heat burning in my chest a centimeter above my heart, with my body pulsating at every heartbeat like an over-filled balloon, with the numbers on the BP monitor angrily flashing “248/195 . . . 248/195 . . .”, the fear was existential.

Matt winked. “Of course you are.”

What followed was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride to the hospital, an hours-long session of “hurry up and wait” in the ER, an uncomfortable and sleepless night followed by an early morning angioplasty, and then by an echo-cardiogram and more poking, tapping, prodding, squeezing, injecting, testing, and monitoring.

In the end, obviously, I survived. Compared to some folks I know, my experience was relatively minor (one artery blockage, handled with one stent and a few angioplasties, no permanent damage to the heart), and the only true casualty was my illusion of invulnerability. I may have been a 66-year old male, non-smoker, active, with no daily meds and no chronic illness or history of heart trouble, but that didn’t matter. Matt, the herculean EMT, perhaps he was a demigod, but I . . . no, I was mortal.

Some friends really came through for us, while others (sadly) disappointed. Helpful advice came in from many quarters, as did well wishes. And I will forever remember all the professionals—a cadre of EMTs, four MDs, a half-dozen RNs, a score of technicians, and support staff uncounted—who all, with professionalism and kindness and competence and humor, kept us going, instilling hope, calming fears, and distracting us at the trying points of our journey. To them, my eternal thanks. You saved me, in many ways.

Admitting my fear to Matt was a turning point, a true and unvarnished admission of my own mortality, and it affected not just this experience, but the rest of my life, moving forward. I am not immortal. I can be broken. I do need to take specific care of myself, rather than trusting in my innate constitution and past record of good health.

It’s not that I will be living in fear, constantly worrying that Death waits around the next corner, but just as I check my side-view mirror before changing lanes, there are simple precautions I can take to keep myself in good nick as long as possible.

Onward.

k

Shout out to the staff at the UW Medical Center – Northwest ER and SCU, and to the great guys at SFD Station #65. You were all wonderful!

Posted in Health, Seattle | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

Anticipation

16 May 2025 by KRAG

There is something special that happens, something ephemeral and transitory, when I approach the end of a good book. It can go one of two ways: I either rush headlong toward the conclusion, driven forward by a thirst for the sweet wine of revelation and release, or I hold off, pacing my approach, lingering over what has come before whilst imagining, wondering, whetting my hunger for the last few chapters. It is a magic, specific to books, this control, this opportunity to choose.

When we watch a movie, the pace is set for us, as we experience the timing, the focus, the framing decisions of director, cinematographer, and editor. The Pause button is analogous, but a weak shadow, often used merely to grab a nosh, hit the loo, or tend to a load of laundry in the dryer. One does not pause a film in its approach to a climactic scene merely to reflect on all the scenes that have come before.

But with a novel, we are the director, we frame the shots, and we flesh out the rooms and towns and landscapes—sketched by the author—with costumes and onlookers and paths of our own fashioning. In a book, we are the collaborators, assisting the author in their work. We bring the words to life in our mind’s eye, and in the case of a well-written book, it is a joy, this work, this journey, so as the pages tick past, from recto to verso, as the end-papers grow nearer, we must choose: race ahead? or slow-walk our way to the last page?

(For those of you who read the ending of a book first, no judgment—okay, a little judgment—but I think you’re missing out on one of readings truly great pleasures. That’s not to say I’ve never read a book that didn’t go along swimmingly only to have a massively sucky ending, but I’ve only thrown a handful of books across the room for that reason, so for me, knowing the ending ahead of time would ruin far more than it would preserve.)

The decade past, my fiction diet has been lacking. The ongoing stresses of work, coupled with what I perceive as the slow (and now much more rapid) deconstruction of our national norms, left my brain ill-equipped to concentrate sufficiently on a novel. The run-up to retirement was anything but stress-free. Disappointingly, the first year of retirement was likewise fraught with unexpected challenges, from dealing with new insurance carriers to a cancer scare to dealing with large household projects and more. So, my first year as a retiree was not just me, lying in my hammock, a novel in one hand and a wee dram of whisky in the other.

Since my recent non-diagnosis, however, I’ve redoubled my efforts on the fiction reading score, and once more I find myself in the delicious dilemma described above. I purchased several books that were on sale, titles and authors about which I knew nothing, the sale decision made solely on the strength of the blurb, and so far I have two titles on this year’s list of Books Read. One turned out to be a mystery, and I found myself wholly absorbed as I read to the conclusion; the other was a surprisingly twisty bit of magic realism, and for that my pace slowed, savoring the last chapters.

I plan to foster this renewed joy of reading books, physical books, in the months (and years) to come. It used to be that I never walked anywhere, stood in any queue, or waited for any bus without having a book in my hand. I took a book with me from room to room, catch a page or two while the tea water was heating, or read a chapter before sleep. I’m hoping that, like riding a bike, these habits will return, that the tablet I have been carrying with me everywhere is exchanged for a dog-eared paperback with a tattered receipt as a bookmark. It’ll take some effort, but I suspect it’ll be worth it.

k

Posted in Books, Creativity | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Soft Reset

29 Apr 2025 by KRAG

For about three months there has been one main question on my mind: What grade of cancer is it?

For the past 65+ years, my body has been pretty reliable. Aside from bad eyes, soft teeth, and legs too short for my height, it has performed well. Oh, there have been episodes—a back injury that plagued me for decades, a stress level that led to a barrage of investigative tests, a critical bout of appendicitis—but I’ve reached retirement age without needing any prescriptions and my main complaints center around stiff joints and thinning hair.

In short, my body has been a real trouper.

I’ve also tried to approach life with a “data-driven” mindset, where study and expertise gather and analyze information in order to formulate probable outcomes and guide my actions. Just as I trust that someone who has studied turtles for thirty years knows more about turtles than I do, and that someone who restores cars knows more about internal combustion than do I, so too do I trust that medical professionals, who have years (sometimes decades) of study and experience under their belt, who are steeped in the knowledge and research of their chosen field, are better qualified to interpret the results of medical tests than I am.

So, in January, when blood tests came back that showed an elevated PSA level, and my doc was concerned that this indicated a 25% chance that I had developed prostate cancer, I was likewise concerned. A 25% chance wasn’t big, but it wasn’t nothing, and we agreed that further investigation was warranted.

Then, in February, when the MRI she ordered showed a lesion on my prostate, and that lesion was determined to have an 80% likelihood of being cancer, my data-driven mindset accepted a cancer diagnosis as the most likely outcome, and the only thing left to determine was what “grade” of cancer it was. Was it the “low” grade type—not aggressive, slow-growing, low risk of complication/metastasis—where the consensus recommended monitoring rather than any active measures? Was it the “intermediate” type, where risks increased, treatments became more active, and outcomes a bit more squishy in predictability? Or the “high” grade, where invasive, sometimes radical treatment was indicated?

Looking deeper into these grades, I learned that about half of such cancers were in the “low” group, and 40–45% were in the “intermediate” group. That left only 5–10% of cancers in the “high” group. To know what grade of cancer, though, required a biopsy and because of the lesion’s location, not an easy biopsy. I will not go into details.

And it was in that month, waiting to have the biopsy, and then the near fortnight between biopsy and results, that my data-driven mindset failed me.

Cancer is not a fun word. It does not wrap one up in a warm blanket of fuzzy good feelings. Having friends and relatives who have battled and (thankfully) made it through their cancer treatments, I know that cancer is not a death sentence. However, having had a mother and step-mother die of cancers, I know that this is not a given. Cancer can and does kill. Often. And though I’ve long heard that “If you get cancer, prostate cancer is the one you want to get,” that men with low-grade prostate cancer often live for decades and usually die of something else, and though I was looking at a 90–95% chance that this cancer was low or intermediate grade, none of that mattered as my data-driven mindset was overcome when my reptilian brain took charge and spent those six weeks between scheduling the biopsy and receiving the results in a fight-or-flight battle with the 5–10% probability of a “high” grade diagnosis.

And I mean a serious battle. Like, a Why bother planting those roses? battle. A No point outlining that novel now scale battle. An I worked so fucking hard to make a safe retirement for us and now this? cage-match battle.

There was no 90–95% chance. Try as I might, despite desperate attempts to focus on the real probabilities, there was only the 5–10%.

During those six weeks my fears blossomed, unfurling their cankerous petals, until Week Three when they began to wither and fade as within me there began to grow a stony, reluctant acceptance. “Worst-case scenario” began to preface much of my thinking, and I started the process of evaluating my life, cataloguing faults and failures, strengths and successes, all in neatly-ordered columns. Aside from the fact that I was really really looking forward to having another quarter-century (give or take) to doink around on the planet, if I did have to “get my affairs in order,” I felt like I’d done a pretty good job of it, overall, and those who depended on me would be taken care of.

It wasn’t a peaceful state of mind, it wasn’t pleasant, but it was acceptable.

Yesterday, the results came in. No cancer. None. Nada. Zip. Due to the difficult position of the lesion, he’d taken three times the usual number of core samples he usually took, just to make sure. All came back negative for cancer.

Remember, up top, when I mentioned that the lesion seen in the MRI had an 80% chance of being cancer? The 80% that has driven my thinking for months? Turns out I’m in the other 20%. Probabilities are just that: probabilities.

Do I regret my data-driven approach to all this? No. Concentrating on the most likely outcomes, while remaining cognizant of the outliers, was a gentler journey than driving blithely down the “happy path” only to smash into a brick wall, should my diagnosis have gone the other way.

I am grateful, exceedingly grateful, that it worked out as it did. I’m grateful for the strength and steadfastness of my wife. I’m grateful for the caring and empathetic treatment from my medical team (nurses absolutely rock). And I’m actually grateful for the opportunity I was given, to see my life from a new perspective, to evaluate my existence in the aggregate rather than the discrete, and to experience this “soft reset” that will now color and inform my approach to what I hope is another quarter-century (give or take) to doink around the planet.

Onward.

k

Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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