“Prince was no taller than me, yet he was larger than life. He had his own style,” my 5’2″ wife told our boys on the drive to school last week. “He’d even wear shoes with high heels.” Our 8-yr-old leaned forward from the back seat and giggled, “Why would he do that?” Without missing a beat, his 6-yr-old brother chimed, “I know … because he was the boss of himself!” Are you the boss of yourself? Prince was born different. Hyper-musical. Uber-sexual. Unquestionably self-confide

My cheeky 6yr-old made goofy expressions in the mirror, raising his eyebrows and, finally, grimacing slightly. “Daddy, you know what I don’t like? That you can’t ever see your real face. Because the mirror is a fake face.” photo by Daren Joy Wow. His observation startled and charmed me, for he grasped something that I’d not considered in over 50 years, something so true and ironic – that we can never actually see ourselves. Though we strive our whole life to understand and op

“Even monkeys fall from trees.”  Chris Bradford, The Ring of Earth. No way, I thought to myself the moment my brush, wet with polymer gloss medium, smeared the letters on the white paper above. For months, I’d labored with a compulsive attention to detail on this epic piece, layering the color and placing each pinkie-sized slice of book cover with precision. The gloss medium represented the very final step in a journey of 1000 miles, a mere mechanical necessity. But, the mome

There’s an old adage that you should have one friend twice your age and one friend half your age. Actually, I just made that up. But it’s true. Because wisdom comes in two flavors, youthful purity and seasoned equanimity. We are born as perfect bowls, full of the water of life. Then, as awareness punctures our skins, we become colanders. But hey … try to make a good bowl of pasta without either. One magical factor living five years on a houseboat was the age range of our neig

I waited alone to be seated in a Thai restaurant on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. In front of me a beefy frat boy and his pom-pom girlfriend touched one another like kittens. I was 29 and bummed to be without a date on Valentine’s Day. My romantic dinner for one was to include pad thai and a frosty Singha with my nose in Hemingway’s Islands In The Stream. But I was OK with it. Until, out of nowhere, the big lug turned to me and said, “No date for Valentines Day, huh?” I looke

This is My Mom!! My mother was a 1950’s beauty queen. I have a photo to prove it. She kneels atop a real live tortoise. Beneath a palm. One hand placed delicately on the languid creature’s shell. The other waving beside her baby doll smile. She is a curvaceous beauty. The white one-piece a masterstroke. Yet, she was a shy teenager who lacked self confidence she tells me. Not the Miss University of Florida contest type. Peer pressure got the best of her. More than once, this b