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Some Things About Me — Mark Tulin
From therapy to becoming a writer
I told my wife to make my obituary short and sweet. A haiku would suffice:
A crow of mischief
Born out of brotherly love
Retires to the sea
No one truly knows me, not even my mother; rest her soul. I'm too cryptic for words. The best I can do is offer a sketch of my life from one book to the next.
Some of us are born writers. It's in our DNA. Our lives are the stories we write. My life has been a circuitous path, from being a Philadelphia psychotherapist to becoming a California writer and photographer. Childhood memories have inspired my stories and poems, particularly my sense of humor. I’m always trying to make sense of my younger years, which were so quirky and volatile.
I had asthma, scarlet fever, and celiac disease as a kid and had to eat twenty pounds of bananas a week for potassium. People used to think I sounded like an accordion because I wheezed so much. That hasn't changed, as shown by the X-rays of my lungs, which look like burnt-out Dresden (a reference to a Kurt Vonnegut novel).
Two German shepherds attacked me in my driveway when I was a kid, leaving my face bruised and swollen. Back in the '60s, doctors made house calls, so Dr. Louis…
