Randy Elrod's Blog

I asked my AI tool Claude to thoroughly research my 20 years of blog posts, almost 1000 of my dreams, my books, social media posts, and fifty years of journal entries and give me the top 20 things I should be thankful for. And Wow!! It was fascinating to see how Claude chose and ranked...

Letters from the Terrace I’m 67, active, healthy, and still having incredible sex (without medication). There. I said it. The thing Americans my age aren’t supposed to admit—because my birth country, America, is what researchers call “one of the most ageist societies on earth.” But here’s what I’ve discovered after two years in Barcelona: chronological...

A Life in Four Movements (Excerpt from Kalien Chapter) Gina loves animals with the kind of fierce devotion that makes her assume the best about every creature she encounters, which is both her greatest gift and, as we were about to learn, occasionally a tactical disadvantage when dealing with the realities of wilderness life. It...

Letters From the Terrace An Atlantic article landed in my feed this week about the disappearance of communal nudity in America—how locker rooms now have private stalls, how generations are growing up never seeing an ordinary naked body that isn’t their own, their partner’s, or algorithmically perfected on a screen. Reading it from Barcelona felt...

First Year at Kalien: Welcome to Survival Mode 2015-2016 From my journal, August 12, 2002:“The Rivendell project—a vision born during a run through the Barn Trail woods. An artist retreat of 25-50 acres, a colony for artists. A place for people from all walks of life (but especially creatives) to find encouragement. Private spaces for...

Letters From The Terrace I take a breath. An experimental inhalation, testing whether my lungs still remember how to fill completely. They do. Barely. I stand on my terrace at Poblet Monastery, overlooking a millennium of Cistercian history spread before me like an illuminated manuscript, and I realize I’ve been holding my breath for months....

From: A Life in Four Movements: An Unfinished Symphony When I first encountered the phrase “Many poets and writers possess the soul of a child,” something electric ran through me—that peculiar sensation of recognition that arrives when truth names a reality you’ve lived but never quite articulated. At sixty-seven, having spent decades excavating the layers...

Letters From the Terrace It’s hard to comprehend that we’ve lived in Barcelona for two full years. Not once—not for a single second—have Gina and I regretted this move. It remains one of the best decisions of our lives. When people ask us when we’re going back to America, we tell them: probably never. They’re...

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Letters from the Terrace When Fiction Becomes Reality: Our Shadow of the Wind Pilgrimage Yesterday, Gina and I lived inside a book. It began with a cryptic letter from me to Gina. A calling card with only the number “32” on it. The letter asked her to meet me for a clandestine meeting with an...