Author Archives: richardporter

There was this one time in 2005 when I walked the periphery of a city that I didn’t know. I was an English teacher in a foreign land. I had no formal training. I was an imposter with good intentions. Santiago, Chile. I lived isolated then, even with close human contact. I was removed, atContinue reading “Day 56 – Walt Whitman, Again”

I’m a marketer by day. I think I used to be a pure writer, whatever that is (maybe a threadbare poet in a cold water flat). Now I sell things, but I’m almost certain they’re good things, if nebulous. I promote community, environmental responsibility, small business, regional consciousness. On my best days I advocate forContinue reading “Day 49 – Masks”

I go out from the city with a rear tire that has a slow leak. If the pressure gets too low when I am afield (this place — so incredible in spring time, an estuary, a peninsula, a river) I pull over and use a hand pump to inflate my tire, to extend my journey.Continue reading “Day 46 – Slow Leak”

The news. Who can read it? Who can avoid it? I am obsessed with reading articles. I can’t look away. They’re my window to the outside world, a world that is strangely placid on the exterior and burning with infection on the inside. News items: -More people have died in America from Coronavirus than peopleContinue reading “Day 43 – Bending the Learning Curve”

What does the “new normal” mean? Nobody knows — and the internet and societal conversations are awash in speculation. I fancy myself a big reader of online articles; I try to ingest the glut of information out there about this global pandemic. In the articles I read representatives from different sectors of the economy andContinue reading “Day 40 – The New Normal”

It has been decided that time will be suspended this year. You will be set adrift in the week. Days will operate on their own internal logic. Some days will not happen at all. A spring break that won’t end. An anxiety attack in slow motion. To fully embrace this phenomena you must become likeContinue reading “Day 37 – It has been decided”

It’s called being listless, baby. I think I’ll wash the same dishes. I think I’ll pace the yard rereading all of the books I have already read and not making it more than a couple of chapters in, because… [insert distracted thoughts] I think I will lay in my now-ritualistic bathtub and daydream about everyContinue reading “Day 27 – Listless, Baby”

And so I’m a teacher now. I have no formal training beyond my own education and a Teaching English as a Second Language Certificate from 2006. Yet I find that I have a natural teaching talent. I sit with my daughter at the kitchen table and tackle kindergarten. We make index cards with single-syllable sightContinue reading “Day 25 – In Which I Become an Educator”

After the plague We decided enough of busyworkFor what, the self-imposed stress? For why? The weather was fine all summer and fallThe planet took a breather Everyone bought picnic tables& drank endless Arnold Palmers poolside.

Days filled with golden spring light. On the news, the directors of health are saying that it’s working — that social isolation is lowering the death count. Maybe summer 2020 will be a viable thing for the collective pursuit of basic human pleasures. I had a dream last night where chunks of my gums fellContinue reading “Day 23 – Who We Will Be”