Twilight Journal

ALS (MND) is a terminal disease for which there are no effective treatments. Within a few years, it gradually suffocates and kills its victims, first fully paralyzing them while leaving all sensation and cognition untouched.

This illness stills my legs and quiets my hands, forcing me to write the words you read here using only my eyes. It places me like a stone in this lingering twilight between darkness and dawn. Yet, this rare and terrible gift has opened me to what many rush past unnoticed in their time. As my body fades, my vision has grown bright.

This journal is my message in a bottle to you from a strange shore that you must also someday cross.

Open it and remember death, yes. But in remembering death, remember life. Let mortality sharpen your senses, widen your mind, deepen your loves, kindle your wonder. For we all dance with death. Some just hear the music more clearly.

As I select, revise, and improve entries from a journal kept in 2024, I’m sharing them here. So, the order in which posts arrive may differ from the season in which you are reading them.

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Autumn Journal: Aurora

It’s been a remarkable year for sky— rainbows in spring, an eclipse in April, and now, autumn’s faint aurora rising above the valley. This reflection is about what we expect from wonder… and what it means to witness something rare, even if it whispers instead of roars. Sometimes, the night shines softly. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Autumn Journal: Treefrog

A treefrog rests on the patio railing. I rest beside it. Both of us drawn to the last warmth of an unseasonably golden autumn day. This reflection is about what happens when you pause long enough to share light with another fragile life— and how even illness, like winter, might just be another kind of transformation. All gifts are borrowed. That’s what makes them shine.

Autumn Journal: Black Walnut

They fall like green cannonballs—Black Walnuts pounding the forest floor, their hard gifts wrapped in bitterness and dye. This reflection is about what grows in consequence— how every squirrel, fern, fox, and fallen nut tells a deeper story of unity, shaped by starlight, soil, and time. Wait. Let the husk rot. Crack the shell. Light waits within.

Intermission (hopefully)

Two weeks in the hospital. A ventilator. Silence. Fear. Then—something else. This reflection is about suffering, stillness, and the luminous awareness beneath the self. Not escape. Not denial. A tuning. A remembering. The body may fail. But the deeper self—vast, radiant, interconnected—remains.

Autumn Journal: Robin

Rain falls softly. Not the downpour of summer, but a patient drizzle that draws a veil across the valley. This reflection is about robins at work in the softened ground— not nesting, not singing, just migrating one worm at a time. Each bird, a fleeting body in an eternal chorus. Rain into rain. Life into life.

Autumn Journal: The Between

After the drought, gentle rain. The stream whispers. The forest breathes. And from the withered ground, asters bloom like stars. This reflection is about flowers that rise not despite the coming cold, but because of it. This is the sacred between: not quite ending, not quite beginning. Just bloom. Just breath. Just now