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Showing posts with label Goines On. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goines On. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Goines Muses
on His Creator’s Two Books

In Sestina

By Moristotle


Eyeing the two books’ mosaic of covers, Goines
pined to read in print his creator’s vignettes
about himself and learn of the man’s musings,
reveries, fantasies, dreams, and perusings,
whose volume was twice as long of writings,
its cover even showing a face to readers.

He wanted to show his own face to readers
and see theirs as well and learn of their goings-
on and where to look to find their writings.
Had any of them written anything—vignettes,
essays, reviews, reports of their perusings,
interviews, poems, stories, random musings?

He did not and never would know their musings,
but his creator’s were there for any reader
who added the second book to their perusings,
and in the first they’d see in fiction Goines’
creator from the outside, a man in vignette
seen by a man outside himself through writing.

His creator knew from his many forays in writing
that working with words facilitated musing.
Arranging words was like painting a vignette,
producing pictures in words, portraits for readers,
moving pictures of comings and goings,
transforming into movie-goers their perusers.

He wondered now, having begun his perusings
of that other volume of his creator’s writings,
whether his creator would also be going
through its pages, to revisit his many musings—
all writers need to become their own readers,
to see themselves, as though in vignette.

Not all his creator’s writings were vignettes:
philosophical essays called on perusers
to become Socratically probing readers;
light verse and wordplay accompanied his writings;
self-reflections brought readers to introspective musing
along paths they had not planned to be going.

He favored the vignettes of all the writings:
they showed him also perusing and musing;
their readers would see that Goines was going on.


Copyright © 2026 by Moristotle

Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Musings & Perusings and Goines 0n have been published

Publication Date: Dec. 24, 2025
75th Birthday Gift Fulfilled

By Moristotle

On January 8, 2018 , in his post, “An Immodest Proposal: A Birthday Surprise Ruined in 750 Words," Geoffrey proposed that I put together a collection of my writings in book form. On several later occasions I apologized for not having yet acted on the proposal, which came from Jennifer as well. Now, at last, I can announce that I have completed the project. Or, rather, Geoffrey and I have completed the project, because he provided consultations and invaluable editing without which I might neither have completed the project nor have achieved as good results as I think we did.
    Musings & Perusings: A Moristotle Reader is available in both paperback and ebook on Amazon. 


Publication Date: Dec. 23, 2025
Goines Has Delivered!

Almost two years ago, after his retirement from blogging, Goines submitted the manuscript of his book Goines On: A self-portrait in fictional vignettes to an agent in the William Morris Endeavor agency. He never heard from the agent, so he decided to self-publish the book along with Musings & Perusings: A Moristotle Reader. Goines is grateful to everyone who encouraged him along the way and helped him get the Goines On book out. He hopes his words of acknowledgment in the book’s front matters adequately convey his thanks.
    Goines On: A self-portrait in fictional vignettes is available in both paperback and ebook on Amazon.

Both books
can be accessed from my author page on Amazon.

Write a Review
If you purchase a copy, you can leave a review of it on Amazon. Just click the stars below its title, opt to see customer reviews, and then click to write your review, which must be titled. Read the reviews already posted for examples.

Copyright © 2025 by Moristotle

Monday, July 31, 2023

Parting Words from Moristotle

Portrait of Moristotle
by Susan C. Price
By Moristotle

Why am I retiring from blogging? For a long time, I have known my sun was slowly setting, but it seems now to be sinking fast, as memory and memories fade. Some mornings even my fingers can’t remember what was the best way I’ve yet found to hold the coffee grinder to brush out the shards of bean.
    But the existing content will still be here, and more posts are already scheduled for August – a few more statements of farewell (suggested by Maik Strosahl, to whom I’m indebted for the idea), a “Father’s Art” column by André Duvall, and poems by Maik, Michael H. Brownstein, and Eric Meub, whose sonnet “Afterlife” will appear last because its title rather caps my going off.


Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Goines On: Wrapping everything up

Click image for more vignettes
Goines felt something like a shroud tightening around him. It was getting so tight he could barely wind his thoughts around it. Whatever it was kept grabbing at his thoughts, entangling them within its grasp, holding them, stifling them, preventing them from cohering.
    Was it time to give in, give up, stop trying to manage so many projects, to let the more difficult ones go and attend only to the simpler ones he hoped he might still be able to carry out?
    He would sound some of his friends out about what seemed to be happening. Was it dementia, was it too much stress?
    He would consult his son and his daughter too, to see what they made of it, what they might advise him to do or not to do.
    He needed to do something.


Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

Monday, July 17, 2023

Goines On: Outside of a dog

Click image for more vignettes
While tidying his office, Goines spotted the bag Mrs. Goines was given a few years earlier at Shakespeare and Company in Paris to carry a book she had purchased there. The bag‘s front side quoted Groucho Marx:
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
    But Goines couldn’t help smiling at the whimsy that James Joyce might actually have penned the joke in a lighter moment during the writing of Finnegans Wake.

Saturday, July 8, 2023

Goines On: Wind rushings

Image from
Juan de Valdés Leal’s
“Finis gloriae mundi” (1672)

Click image for more vignettes
In perusing his archives, Goines was reminded of something from thirteen years earlier. The passenger window in their car had stopped working, and as he was driving with both front windows open to a repair shop, a cattle truck passed him on the interstate, and he got a nose full of the aroma of livestock.
    The cattle were presumably on their way to a slaughterhouse, and Goines had felt bad about that.
    He still felt bad about animal slaughter. Those animals were related to us, as his 2010 reading of Richard Dawkins’ 2004 book, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, had underscored for him:

Friday, July 7, 2023

Goines On: تونِس

Click image for more vignettes
Mrs. Goines’ chuckle reached Goines in the kitchen. She was at the dining table reading the day’s features while he prepared breakfast.
    “What?” Goines inquired, in the shorthand that had evolved from his various ways of asking her what she was finding funny or otherwise interesting.
    “The people of Tunisia are obsessed with tuna. They put tuna on pizza, pastries, and in many other dishes.”
    Goines joked that was probably why the country was named “Tunisia.”
    And then he wondered why Tunisia (
تونِس) wasn’t spelled “Tunasi,” pronounced “tuna sea,” but he didn’t have the Arabic for that thought, nor the pronunciation.

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

Tuesday, July 4, 2023

Goines On: Is today a sex day?

Click image for more vignettes
The Goineses had just had sex, something they hadn’t had in weeks.
    Or was it months? Goines remembered groping Mrs. Goines more than she wanted when they were in Paris the previous year. Had that been the last time?
    They had had sex right after lunch, after a few pieces of Hershey’s milk chocolate. Chocolate was indispensable, he said aloud because of the occasion.

Monday, July 3, 2023

Goines On: Holy days, holidays...
all folly days?

Click image for more vignettes
Looking for something old to fill the day’s posting slot, Goines discovered that exactly 14 years earlier he had railed against holidays, including both the secular ones like the Fourth of July and the holy ones (“holy” was in quotes). He had declared that about the only good thing to be said for holidays was that they excused us from going to the office.
    Had Goines been going through hard times at the office 14 years ago? He doubted they were hard times. They were midway through the tenure of UNC President Erskine Bowles, and Erskine was delightful, more outgoing than Molly Corbett Broad had been.

Saturday, July 1, 2023

Links to First Appearances of “Goines On” Covers

A Visual Index

By Moristotle

While applying the finishing touches to “Links to André Duvall’s Father Billy Charles Duvall’s Art,” I thought of the rather obvious possibility of constructing a similar index to my “Goines On” vignettes, using the column’s unique cover images and linking each one to the very first (or only) vignette that used it.
    What you see here (and can also see in the sidebar) is the result. Try out a link or two.


And that wasn’t all (or even half of it), because I felt a strong inspiration and motivation to get on with fulfilling a commitment I had made to my son and daughter, that I would begin publishing book collections of my “musings & perusings” before the end of 2023. My initial book would be (and might still be) a collection of some of my better poems.