My debut collection of writings is an immortalization of expression.
The shape of such a work was unclear to me at the start some years ago. As I compiled excerpts spanning the breadth of twenty years into my past, the whole of what has become Pride and Glass materialized gradually. While some material is autobiographical in origin, some is fictitious if observed and interpreted literally. An autobiography was never my endgame, nor the resulting collection. Rather, Pride and Glass is a compilation of metaphors, some my own statements and impressions, chronicling exploration of identity. Youthful angst and quests toward independence, the yearning for clarity of self-identity so characteristic of youth. Tears, fears and grievances, and just as much, realizations of the intrinsic beauty of the defining moments and circumstances, both painful and pleasurable, that shape us along the journey. Adventures and monotony, pitfalls and victories, vices and clarity, resolutions with unanswered questions. Kindness and travesty alike. Irony. Parody. Nuance. Frivolity. The best of days and also the worst, and the essential and unfailing beauty that lies therein through all of it. I find myself inspired significantly by the writings of the twentieth century Beat Generation, though emulation of their great work, I feel, was neither the goal nor the result. I admire rebellion against literary and thought censorship, and chosen literary devices and language are deliberate and necessary elements of this work. Let it be a nod to those Greats who dared to defy convention in the pursuit of artistic liberty in the rawness of self-expression. May this work find you well on your own journey of experience. In your own observations along that way, may you, too, taste and savor freedom, and find your expression. JD Sandy 2016
the more ‘open’ an Open-Book Man,
the more protected, He feels, is His most-protected secret:
it is hidden between the verses of the chapters of His being.
-jd sandy
jd sandy
Now the visible confirmation of what I knew by instinct
But had never seen: that only strange things can be beautiful -Longenbach
as familiar voices hooting and hollering
laughter. maybe my name.
i’m at my reverie balcony scrambling jumbled thoughts
racing at me shortly past my third smoke,
coffee, white pill, soda pop, two cats, and i need a shave. tonight.
young lady asked me where i got my Ring.
[my hospital shop, for a dollar, only an Oblong
looking Piece will do.] when i told her, she knew exactly me.
i am adorned with little Oddities
which, i wish, would feel enough right, at times, that
if They were right-on-point and i looked and saw
the same of them on each encounter with a man
in passing, They would lose Their luster.
i’ve tried it.
many a beach day.
in venturing into twenty-four-seven nine-to-five
and though, not trifling, that life, without my little Oddities,
ugly.
Preface
"Oddities"
All above-shown written and graphic material is authored by, and is the exclusive property of, JD Sandy, unless otherwise indicated. 2025
