Dead Geese Dancing

The name of this book came in part from a pair of gloves that I wear while riding my bike to work on cold mornings. They're insulated from the down of dead geese. The dancing part just sounded good. The inspiration for this series came from a Facebook post by a friend in early 2011 who announced that he had terminal cancer. He was about my age and it got me thinking about the fragility of life and how some of us go through our routines day after day without a lot of thought. I decided to try to begin observing things a little more deeply by writing something down every day for a year and see what would become of it. Each morning during my ride to work, I would first come up with a title for the next piece, and then begin composing in my head. The following morning I would turn it into what eventually would become a page in the book. The result is this collection starting on February 10th of 2011 and ending 365 days later. With this unrelenting schedule, naturally some of the writings were forced, but others came easily. Some are schlock, others engaging. Some are angry, others calm. Some took a few minutes to write, others took a couple of hours. All mostly reflect the mood I happened to be in on that particular day. I'm sharing these stories with the notion that perhaps they might inspire others to get up and dance dangerously with their own goose I went to visit my friend shortly before he died and shared with him what I was doing. He was the only person I told about this project until it was complete. Kevin Fristad - March, 2012