I don’t care if the sun don’t shine / I don’t care if the bells don’t chime / Just as long as you love me. – Buck Owens Time is infinite, but mine isn’t. I just don’t have time to care about everything. Some things don’t amount to a hill of beans, or …
Author: wastedpilgrim
I'm a writer.
Blogs. Novels. Journalism. Songs.
It's all I know how to do well.
It’s Only Fiction (A Song)
Here are the lyrics to my latest song. I wrote most of it a couple months ago, but I wasn't particularly pleased with it until this morning, when I finally got around to dickering with the words again. My daddy was a drunkard but I didn’t write about him in my song I claimed …
Scuppernongs and Muscadines, Part One
My daddy used to say / You gotta be a man / You gotta pull your weight / You gotta work the land / But every time I tried and failed / He turned away from me / By the time I was a man / It was too late for him to see. …
Ready to Play
Sports fans often oversimplify matters when their clubs fare poorly. If it gets clobbered in a big match, the fans assume the players were out drinking all night, or they were all smoking pot in the locker room. Sometimes it even works in reverse. About thirty years ago, I was sitting behind two elderly gentlemen …
The Paved Road
The first thing that I saw / When I woke up this morning / Was bad news on the TV I left on the night before / It’s the same old, sad story / Somebody shot somebody / Most of the time the victim / Was a junkie or a whore. The Weather Channel …
The Paved Road, Part Three (Final)
Well, the woman that I loved / Didn’t quite return the favor / And the woman that loved me / Left me tinged with regret / As I ruminate about the state of my sad depression / My life seems no more worthy than an empty silhouette. Bundled up in the house was a …
An Ode to Wallace Stegner, 1909-93
First must I admit I’m writing this blog principally because I wanted to accompany the sketch of Wallace Stegner I drew last night while passively watching the Boston Red Sox get pummeled by the Seattle Mariners again. My pride in this sketch enabled me to get through my almost nightly disappointment in the Red Sox. …
The Paved Road, Part Two
Eddie Sylva sat in what was mostly darkness, illuminated only by a candle next to his inoperable lamp. Similarly unavailable were the refrigerator, washer, dryer, television, phone (he hadn’t been able to find, or uncover in the darkened closet, the old one), uh, stereo, laptop, printer, clock, toaster, and undoubtedly various other electric devices of …
The Paved Road, Part One
The first thing that I saw / When I woke up this morning / Was bad news on the TV I left on the night before / It’s the same old, sad story / Somebody shot somebody / Most of the time the victim / Was a junkie or a whore. The Weather …
Between Short Stories
From whence do the short stories spring? The majority of the stories on this site began with songs I’ve written. “Facebook Friends,” for instance, began as a song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnmKXEPGCnU As a matter of fact, http://www.wellpilgrim.wordpress.com evolved into a depository for short stories. I split time between working on novels* – “Crazy by Natural Causes” is …
Nightrider's Lament 