about
Welcome to emerkel.com — I’m Eddie Merkel, a retired guy still figuring things out. I’m here to listen, reflect, and share what I’ve gathered along the way — in words, in music, in memory.
This site holds poems, essays, and stories — pieces of a lifelong conversation with the world. Not answers, just attempts. I don’t write because I know. I write because I’m trying to find out.
I’ve been thinking a lot in recent years about constraints — the ones we carry, the ones we inherit, and the ones we put on ourselves. Once, while talking with my daughter, we named how rarely people let their freak flags fly. That stuck with me. Why do we hold back? Why do we live inside the lines someone else drew?
There are a few quotes that have stayed with me for decades — they’ve shaped how I see the world, and in quiet moments, they’ve been the source of regret as much as inspiration.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
— Thoreau
“Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
“When an old man dies, a library burns.”
— African proverb
They remind me of how easy it is to get pulled off course — by distractions, by expectations, by everything that wants your attention but gives nothing back. They remind me that sharing what we’ve learned matters — even if only one other person ever hears it. Even if it’s years later, when we’re long gone.
I love movies, all kinds. One I really like is “Bad Day at Black Rock.” Near the end of that movie, one of the characters utters a line that has captivated me from that day to this. He says he’s lived a life “of quiet contemplation.”
So here I am.
I write by hand most days. I study French — partly to sharpen my mind, partly to better connect with my wife’s French Canadian family. I’m learning to play the saxophone — slowly, joyfully, humbly. I spend time with books, with silence, and with the rhythms of the day. I’m trying to live more in tune.
There’s something I call the Undersong — a kind of music I believe runs beneath all things. Not literal music, always, but a resonance. A pulse. A thread that says: you’re here, you’re alive, and it matters.
This site is not a platform. It’s a practice. A place to think out loud, to leave a trace, to pass on whatever I can.
Read on or not. That part’s up to you.
Me? I just want to share.
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