Ruminations

Ruminations is a collection of random, but sometimes related, stories, essays, and poems spanning a writing journey of over fifty years and encompassing the author's experiences in the military during the Vietnam War, a side diversion to earn a living as a practicing attorney, and then a writing career after he was paid to go away in a corporate merger. The hiatus from being a lawyer provided an opportunity to travel and reflect on life, and the end of life, and how his life had played out over time. These reflections, along with drafts of stories and poems and scraps of paper tucked away in a file cabinet, provide the grist and foundation for this collection.

The Vietnam-era related works have common themes running through them, and all except the essay, "Vietnam Story," and the poem, "The Wench is Dead," were written in draft form while the author was in Vietnam or shortly after his return home and gathered dust until he turned to writing full-time. Each of the essays or creative nonfiction stories has its genesis in something the author experienced (e.g., "Strangers on the Appalachian Trail") or learned from his family history ("The Poisoning"). The fictional stories were inspired by a mélange of life experiences and observations and thinking "what if ..." ("Across the Divide") or by current events ("Break the Bubble"). The poetry comes from staring out windows and the author's love of irony, paradox, whimsey, allusion, and allegory. As stated in the first poem, "I Am Not a Poet" "I record impressions, images, ideas, conundrums, /if not from the heart, from the amygdala." For what they are worth, these are eclectic ruminations about life, love, death, and whatever else the author stumbled across over the last fifty years.

Born in Statesville, North Carolina, James (Jim) Garrison attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he nurtured his interest in creative writing, and Duke University Law School, where he was drafted into the U.S. Army after his first year. Arriving home from Vietnam on Christmas morning in 1970, he returned to Duke Law School the next month. After graduation from Duke and marriage to his best friend, he set out on a first career practicing utilities law in a boutique law firm in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Seeking a calmer and less stressful environment than criminal law and jury trials, he joined Texaco Inc.'s legal department in Atlanta, as a corporate attorney. When that office closed, he ended up in Texaco's regional office in Houston, Texas-as a labor and employment lawyer representing the company in various legal proceedings in Federal and state courts and agencies and in labor arbitrations, as well as in other areas of legal strife. Not exactly calm and low-stress work. His last position at Texaco was Assistant General Counsel for Regulatory matters with a Texaco/Shell/Saudi Aramco partnership for downstream operations in the U.S. Following a corporate merger, he decided to stay home for the kids, one an artist living in Berlin, Germany, the other a lawyer in Delaware-just in case they called. That's when he started working on his first novel, QL 4, based on his experiences as a military policeman in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. Published by TouchPoint Press in 2017, QL 4 has received several awards, including a silver medal for literary fiction from the Military Writers Society of America and placed as a finalist for the 2018 Montaigne Medal. His early law career led to a few bizarre civil and criminal cases that provided fodder for The Safecracker (TouchPoint Press 2019), which has won legal thriller awards; it was a category finalist in the 2020 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. His third novel, What Seems True (TouchPoint Press 2021), was inspired by a true crime in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1979, a crime for which the shooter was never convicted. His short stories and poems have appeared in online literary magazines and anthologies and his poem "Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry" was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart prize. His wife and still best friend, June, is a clarinetist who would have preferred he not stay home for the kids. Apart from reading good literature and writing, Jim's interests include travel, hiking in the mountains of North Carolina and Colorado, and good food, preferably with candlelight and a nice, reasonably priced wine. Jim Garrison is a recovering lawyer who lives and writes in Houston, Texas.

Geoffrey Garrison graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union, in New York City, in 2001 and was a Fine Arts Researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie, in Maastricht, NL, from 2004 to 2005. In addition to working as a writer, editor, and artist, he has done freelance work in design and illustration. He lives in Berlin, Germany.