The Confessions of Ira Short

These days have taken on a surreal aspect. The outlines are familiar, but the edges are blurring, changing; details melting into the background. I'm standing outside of it, looking at a strange, yet familiar landscape. I've been here before. A half-dozen times when the world was cut out from under me, when everything that had been, no longer was. Updated: March 20, 2021 I started this post a year ago today. Wrote it, and never posted it. I looked at it, read it, re-wrote it, re-read it. I had a hundred reasons for not finishing it, for not posting it. In large part, it was because I was lucky enough to have been one of the fortunate ones. I haven't lost my job. On March 20, 2020, I was on my way back home from the office with my computer hardware in the front seat of the Miata, taking it home so I could set up my "office" in one of the spare bedrooms, where I have continued to work for the last year. I didn't post this because, after all, what di...

When they are running, horses take one breath perfectly in time with one stride. At a canter and gallop horses do not breathe by expanding and contracting their chest - all air movement comes from movement of the legs and diaphragm. In other words, the act of running actually moves the air in and out of the lungs. From the traffic light at the bottom of the grade, the highway runs straight and flat five miles across the desert floor to where it disappears into the Interstate. If I catch the green light coming off the hill, I can carry my speed onto the flat. It's smooth and usually lightly traveled, but there's also enough tamarisk trees and slight hills to give the CHP a place to hide. Discretion is the better part of not getting a ticket in 20 years. I hit the red light just before the freeway. They added this signal when they widened and re-paved the highway - it can be a pain if you get behind a truck on the on-ramp. I'm first in line though, and when the light ...