In the early 90's brother Mike and I lived in Mom's house on Johnson St. in Sebastopol. Mike would write stories, poems and random thoughts on this ancient stand-alone word processor. I kept these files.

Our conversations often revolved around the topics found here. Me an intensely angry young man and Mike trying to feel alive by jumping off things that should not be jumped off of. Both of us desperate to see more meaning in things than probably actually exists. That’s the meaning of the pendant that he had commissioned that is now mine. It’s not a fuck you to the world: it’s the reaper’s fleshless hand and it’s Mike saying “Not today!” you bony old bastard.

The file format from that old machine is funky but I've tried to preserve Mike's formatting as best I could. Some of the writing is rough because they were first drafts on a glorified typewriter – but they are my brother. The folder is called “Splash” because that’s the nickame he had at the time. For splashing in the water or splashing on the rocks, I do not know.

I hear my brother’s voice in these words and I hope that you will as well. There were depths to Mike that the eye could never catch. Reading them again, I realize how much my brother influenced me and the blow is softened a bit by realizing that I like the parts of him that stuck.