Category: Post
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Twenty Reasons for Gratitude on This Thanksgiving
I asked my AI tool Claude to thoroughly research my 20 years of blog posts, almost 1000 of my dreams, my books, social media posts, and fifty years of journal entries and give me the top 20 things I should be thankful for. And Wow!! It was fascinating to see how Claude chose and ranked…
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Why 67 Feels Like 50—One Word: Spain!
Letters from the Terrace I’m 67, active, healthy, and still having incredible sex (without medication). There. I said it. The thing Americans my age aren’t supposed to admit—because my birth country, America, is what researchers call “one of the most ageist societies on earth.” But here’s what I’ve discovered after two years in Barcelona: chronological…
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The Rise and Fall of Our Chicken Empire
A Life in Four Movements (Excerpt from Kalien Chapter) Gina loves animals with the kind of fierce devotion that makes her assume the best about every creature she encounters, which is both her greatest gift and, as we were about to learn, occasionally a tactical disadvantage when dealing with the realities of wilderness life. It…
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The Naked Truth
Letters From the Terrace An Atlantic article landed in my feed this week about the disappearance of communal nudity in America—how locker rooms now have private stalls, how generations are growing up never seeing an ordinary naked body that isn’t their own, their partner’s, or algorithmically perfected on a screen. Reading it from Barcelona felt…
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When Dreams Meet Reality and Reality Wins
First Year at Kalien: Welcome to Survival Mode 2015-2016 From my journal, August 12, 2002:“The Rivendell project—a vision born during a run through the Barn Trail woods. An artist retreat of 25-50 acres, a colony for artists. A place for people from all walks of life (but especially creatives) to find encouragement. Private spaces for…
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Breathing at the Edge of a Thousand Years
Letters From The Terrace I take a breath. An experimental inhalation, testing whether my lungs still remember how to fill completely. They do. Barely. I stand on my terrace at Poblet Monastery, overlooking a millennium of Cistercian history spread before me like an illuminated manuscript, and I realize I’ve been holding my breath for months….
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The Soul Of A Child
From: A Life in Four Movements: An Unfinished Symphony When I first encountered the phrase “Many poets and writers possess the soul of a child,” something electric ran through me—that peculiar sensation of recognition that arrives when truth names a reality you’ve lived but never quite articulated. At sixty-seven, having spent decades excavating the layers…
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Two Years in Barcelona: A Love Letter to Our New Life
Letters From the Terrace It’s hard to comprehend that we’ve lived in Barcelona for two full years. Not once—not for a single second—have Gina and I regretted this move. It remains one of the best decisions of our lives. When people ask us when we’re going back to America, we tell them: probably never. They’re…
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Protected: The Bleeding Pen
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We Slept in Zafón’s Writing Room
Letters from the Terrace When Fiction Becomes Reality: Our Shadow of the Wind Pilgrimage Yesterday, Gina and I lived inside a book. It began with a cryptic letter from me to Gina. A calling card with only the number “32” on it. The letter asked her to meet me for a clandestine meeting with an…
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Protected: The Exodus Fund
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Protected: Letters from the Terrace
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Protected: The Dangerous Reader (Chapter 5)
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A Brief Personal Update
Subject: The Most Creative Season of My Life Good morning, Thanks for being part of the randyelrod.com community. I’m in a massive creative season—perhaps the most significant of my life. A Brief Update: For months, I’ve been working with Claude AI on something unprecedented: digitizing 67 years of my life—thousands of journal entries, 700+ dreams,…
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Protected: Ministry of Denial
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Protected: The Body as Target – Chapter 3
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Protected: Orgasm as Spiritual Practice
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Protected: Thirteen Years of Liberated Love
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Protected: Chapter 2 “The Educated Body”
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Empathy is Not a Weakness
A Defense of Humanity’s Greatest Gift I’ve been thinking about Montaigne lately, the way he wrote about cruelty—how he could feel so deeply into another being’s suffering that he couldn’t bear to watch even animals in distress. Five hundred years ago, this French philosopher understood something we’re in danger of forgetting: that our capacity to…