by Mike Bendzela As you slide toward retirement age, it becomes clear that you have not accomplished what you had hoped by this point in life and that the meaning of it all is still as unfathomable as it was when you were thirty. You have resigned yourself to the fact that you do not…

by Mike Bendzela The week before Memorial Day, I’m back to my old tricks again, poisoning pests in my little orchard. It’s the period after petal fall, when the romance of bloom season gives way to the horrors of war. Commencing in mid-May in Maine, I walk among fruit trees amidst a profusion of blossoms;…

by Mike Bendzela Funny how an object that weighs 8.1 x 1019 tons manages to elude our attention most of the time. But it can be very shy, sometimes crouching on the evening horizon, thin as a filament of copper; sometimes disappearing from view for whole days at a time. Then, one bright afternoon, you’ll…

by Mike Bendzela The term “Little Apocalypse” is borrowed from New Testament studies, referring to the Olivet Discourse in Jerusalem. This speech first appeared around the year 70 CE, in Chapter 13 of the original written gospel, the Gospel of Mark. After the scene of the cleansing of the temple, before the Last Supper and…

by Mike Bendzela We love our antique coal range. Are we bad people? The answer is easily “Yes,” of course, but it has less to do with our infatuation with the coal range than with our membership in the club of approximately 1.5 billion in the industrialized world. Our utter dependence on the energy-intensive collective…

by Mike Bendzela Mother used to say to me when I was growing up, “Mikey, you’re going places! Thursday’s child has far to go!” She was referring to Thursday, February 18, 1960 and the traditional English nursery rhyme. She didn’t seem to realize that “has far to go” could mean “perpetually behind” as well as…

by Mike Bendzela Given that it affects about 2.4% of the population, most of you probably know someone with this disorder. Some of you may even have it yourselves. Continually absenting yourself from others’ company out of chronic fear should come with the preamble, “It’s not you, it’s me,” which in this case is not…

by Mike Bendzela I am a sort of “coincidence theorist”: I think most shit just happens, and our human duty is to be simultaneously appalled and amused by it all. The first gay man I ever met, who died of AIDS in 1985, was of the opposite temperament. He often told me “there are no…

by Mike Bendzela The greatest of stories has no proper beginning, at least none that we can yet discern, but proceeds from a warm, shallow shore some 375 million years ago. There a lobe-finned fish found a way to use its bony limbs to stand up under water. It was thus able to lift its…

by Mike Bendzela An Ape meets a Holy Man who is visiting a zoo. The Holy Man has made a career of debasing such animals as the Ape, and now the Ape sees an opportunity to preempt him. She is a fabulist and must act quickly. “The animals are trying to tell you something.” “I…

by Faculty At twenty minutes before dismissal time, I can think of nothing else to say but, “Class is over for today.” As they all begin to scatter, a tall blonde student with a pigtail coiled on her head like a hat comes forward to stand before my desk. She holds the copy of her…

by Mike Bendzela The funeral director is a good guy, both sedate and friendly. I wait for him to wrap up his service in advancing rain before driving up to the site to close the grave. The mourners depart the gravesite but do not leave the cemetery. They hang out near their pickup trucks, some…

by Mike Bendzela The idea that “the only intolerable thing is intolerance” wears its contradiction on its sleeve. It also violates the Golden Rule–to behave toward others as you would have them behave toward you. We all have limits to our tolerance–call them “intolerances”–and it’s not too much to ask others to tolerate them, within…

by Mike Bendzela “What genre do you play in, Mike?” “Old time.” “That’s rather vague, isn’t it?” [An actual conversation.] Old time music (some write “old-time” or “oldtime”) is where my interests in rural American folk history, cultural evolution, and language-play come together to form a most satisfying way to lay waste to time. Yes,…

by Mike Bendzela It took a couple of million years, but any careful observer could have seen it coming. One of the most destructive and invasive mammalian species in the world has been seen striding across the continent. This primate was recently spotted at a watering hole in the northern territories, confirming its presence in…

by Mike Bendzela [Part One of this essay can be found here.] Alexia, Redux Throughout the winter of 2017, as he recovered from the stroke, Don went through a battery of therapies, including walking on a treadmill with and without handrails; navigating the winding corridors of the rehab center and having to find his way…

by Mike Bendzela [This will be a two-part essay.] Ischemia When the burly, bearded young man climbs into the bed with my husband, I scooch up in my plastic chair to get a better view. On a computer screen nearby, I swear I am seeing, in grainy black-and-white, a deep-sea creature, pulsing. There is a…

by Mike Bendzela Narrative is the elucidation of backstory.  Thus, narrative partakes of other stories, is composed of them. There is no infinite regress of narratives, though. At the end lies a cosmology, which I use here to mean a master story, or, “a doctrine describing the natural order of the universe.” This the ground…

by Mike Bendzela While changing keys during a recent old time jam session, a friend asked for my thoughts about this new ChatGPT thing, seeing as I teach writing to college students and the fear is that this text-generating gadget will disrupt how such courses are taught. I had to answer that I did not…

by Mike Bendzela And on the pedestal, these words appear: . . . “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. —From “Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley Prologue from Part One An investigation into the livelihoods of two great-great grandfathers, both oilfield workers in Ohio, has of necessity become a study in the…