Hi! And welcome.
This is an incomplete list of David Kunin’s different projects:
A Podcast
My current project.
You can find The Ten Crutches Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit the website at TenCrutches.link and find show notes to any episode in the Archive.
The Ten Crutches Podcast is my attempt to help people with being human. I try avoid issues that people fight about, the surface conflicts, like who has the right opinion about this or that. I try to go deep, diving down until I find issues we all share.
What are the conditions that make it difficult to be a human? How can we address them?
An E-Book
My latest book.
The one that inspired the podcast.
It’s a collection of thoughts and practices and attitudes that (hopefully!) will help you engage more fully in the present moment. It’s based on the idea that we all could use some help to exist where and when we actually are.
A “crutch” is symbolic of something you use temporarily for support as you heal what is “broken” (our ability to be easily in the present.) Just because something is broken, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with us personally. It just means something in us needs healing.
The 10 crutches are:
There is no such thing as “the past.”
There is no such thing as “the future.”
All “things” (and “events”) are the same.
All “things” (and “events”) are different.
You will never find “it” outside of you.
You will never find “it” inside of you.
You are one with everything evil.
You are one with everything good.
You will never really know.
Your senses are the gate to the present moment.
Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present is available for free download:
A Sci-Fi Novel
My very first science-fiction novel!
Dagger Jameswood wants to believe he is a crack detective, only he’s never solved a case. Or even been hired by anyone. Or even been out of his mother’s house for very long. Then a phone call from a mysterious woman begins the adventure of a lifetime.
This quirky hero faces multiple, ultimately life-threatening challenges on his way to learning how to enter the fourth dimension. It’s a fun read that gives a light touch to the sci-fi. Plus, you’ll be glad to meet several memorable and eccentric characters as you follow Dagger’s great adventure.
Available as ebook, paperback or audiobook.
20 Weird Audio Tracks
Listen to audio tracks created by a fiction character.
Dager Jamewood is a fictional character who has created an album of 20 audio tracks.
Dagger’s creativity has been described as “pure genius” by his fictional mother.
Tracks range from the strictly humorous, to lighthearted social commentary, to addressing profound philosophical concerns in a fun way with a great beat.
Here are 3 sample tracks:
Strictly humorous: Pizza Delivery Man
What if a space alien disguised itself as a horny woman who ordered pizza for a porn movie?
Light-Hearted Social Commentary: You Are Unique
You share “being unique” with billions of people.
Profound Philosophical Concerns Addressed In A Fun Way With A Great Beat: Meaning
Don’t distract yourself by thinking that you know anything for sure.
Check out the other 17 tracks! Any particular track is on sale for 99 cents. The entire album of 20 tracks can be purchased for $14.99.
Or, you can check out the Dagger Does Audio You-Tube Channel. Dagger used Midjourney to create videos to go along with a few of his audio tracks.
My Essays & Short Stories
You can read all of my essays and short stories for free.
My Substack page is called Off The Cushion. This is a reference to sometimes describing meditation as being “on the cushion” and the rest of your life being “off the cushion.” I stopped using the site in 2025, but I still keep my work available there to anyone who is interested.
My five personal favorites from Off The Cushion are:
The Robot and the Mouse – A short story: An android goes in search of a zen master. Written for those who likes sci-fi and zen koans.
Hawaii Is Free! – A fantasy (sketch-of-a-screenplay) of how Hawaii might regain its independence with extraterrestrial help.
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize – Homage to the spirit of Stanley Cavel: this is an essay about the exceedingly mediocre film What Happens in Vegas (2008, Ashton Kutcher & Cameron Diaz). I assert this movie is not a Romantic Comedy, but a Comedy of Remarriage. Many references to Cavels’ Pursuits of Happiness: The Holywood Comedy of Remarriage.
Mount Fuji Is My Teacher – A personal essay about my experience climbing Mt Fuji, mistakes and all.
What I Did On My Summer Vacation – Short sci-fi story about a robot who, while surveying the galaxy, meets the Earth, falls in love and gets in a whole lot of trouble.
20 min Video Essay
The content is based on mt essay Keep Your Eyes On The Prize, mentioned above. I explore the movie What Happens in Vegas (2008, Ashton Kutcher & Cameron Diaz) through the lens of Stanley Cavell’s book Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage.
While watching What Happens in Vegas, I found the similar scenes and themes to:
The 1934 movie It Happened One Night (Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert)
The 1949 movie Adam’s Rib (Spenser Tracy & Katherine Hepburn)
The 1937 movie The Awful Truth (Cary Grant & Irene Dunne)
The video is an exploration of how men and women have been dealing with the same issues since movies began (at the very least!) Behind it all are some thoughts about what love really is and how to encounter it.
This video was uploaded to a You-Tube channel I called Watch David Talk About Movies. No need to go there, since this was the only video I made for that channel. Here is the blurb:
Movies are like dreams and I love to interpret dreams. My channel weaves insights about movies with all the other stuff floating through my mind. I am not so much about camera angles and edits. I am more about meanings and issues that affect us all and how we can look at them with movies as a lens.
Before the Ten Crutches Podcast, this channel was my main project. I had 2 other videos planned, but they are most likely on permanent hold. What I found was that it’s WAY too difficult to make these videos (for me, anyway) and I gave up after this one video.
Here’s a rough sketch of the two other videos I had planned:
Tentative Title: What’s Wrong With The Femme Fatale Archetype?
This was to be a discussion of femme fatale using the following two movies:
Double Indemnity (1944, Fred MacMurry, Barbara Stanwyck and the amazing Edward G Robinson. Directed by Billy Wilder) and
Body Heat (1981, William Hurt, Kathleen Turner. Very nice supporting role by the young Ted Danson. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan).
What I found wrong with femme fatales can be found more in depth in this essay.
Quick summary: the femme-fatele archetype men look like idiots. And we are! I get it! But men want it both ways: we want to be in charge, but then we also want to be completely free of responsibility if we are “seduced” by a femme fatale. If you watch two movies, you can see the women were trouble, sure; but so were the men. And there is no reason, when you watch the movies closely, to blame the women and let the men off the hook. But ever since Eve “tempted” Adam with an apple, men have been blaming women. Even some women blame the woman. My plan for this video was to find a way to suggest we men grow up a little and take responsibility for any apples we eat.
Tentative Title: Male Behavior At Its Worst
I was interested in watching Last Tango In Paris again (1972, Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, who also wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay.) I had seen Last Tango in the theater during the 1980s and remembered very few details, just that it was a powerful film.
I began by doing some reading about the film before I watched it again. I came across the scandal that Bertolucci and Brando deceived Maria Schneider (who was only 19 years old at the time the film was made). I guess Bertolucci did not trust her acting abilities. He wanted to get “an authentic reaction” from his actress, so the rape scene was an actual rape scene, unexpected by Ms. Schneider, with no butter at all in the script. Whatever Bertolucci’s excuse, Brando went right along and this terrible deception was revealed years later.
I was already going to use the movie to talk about the horrific male behavior of rape. I knew the movie had an older male character, in anguish after the suicide of his wife, having an affair with a young woman. The male character in the movie at one point rapes the young woman. This, and other ways the male character treated the female, seemed enough to discuss the darker side of men. But when I learned of the scandal, which I had not heard of at the time it was revealed, (media hermit that I am), I had a whole other angle to look at how destructive men can be.
A Self-Help Essay
My most popular essay on Substack:
The Tree Of Acceptance Of Dying.
Just as I was nearing the end of my hospice nursing career, I wrote this essay.
Another nurse on my team was putting together a book. She asked me and 8 or 9 others on our hospice team, “How can people know the right time to chose hospice?” This essay was my answer to that question. It became a chapter in her book Hospice: A Different Kind of Hope.
Many people have found this essay helpful. If you or a loved one is nearing the end of life, I hope it will help you as well.
Read “The Tree of Acceptance of Dying“
One Chapter in Someone Else’s Book
Hospice: A Different Kind Of Hope by Ellen Stilwell.
One thing the book is about: “Criteria for choosing your hospice team sooner.” Many people simply wait too long. There are too many doctors still afraid to talk openly to their patients about death and dying and how best to use your time when the time is limited. (I mean, really, the time is always limited, but it’s quite possible to make an educated guess about when you are likely in your last year or two of life and make plans accordingly.)
Hospice should not be an after-thought. This book provides a comprehensive look at the issue from many angles. Many of the amazing contributors to this book were on my Manhattan team at the hospice where I worked. It’s a great collection of essays about hospice from many points of view: doctor, nurse, social worker, chaplain.
I have one chapter in this book. It’s adapted from my essay “The Tree of Acceptance of Dying.”
Please consider buying Hospice: A Different Kind of Hope on Amazon (Kindle or paperback.)
My 2nd Book
How do we move from self-criticism to self-confidence?
For those new to writing fiction, or any creative looking to be inspired, this short book is a series of ideas and explorations on deep creativity. How can we release ourselves from harsh self-criticism? This book gives you new tools to become the fiction writer you’ve always wanted to be.
This book grew out of a workshop I led called “Story Sculpture,” which assumed you can “sculpt” fiction much like you sculpt clay or papier mâché.
Available only as e-book for $2.99.
My Very First Book!
Use poker metaphors to explore your spiritual practice! No special knowledge of poker or spirituality needed. Pay no attention to the clunky, awkward prose of my first book. How can we become more available to the present moment as the metaphoric (or real) poker players we all are?
What do all us eccentric characters need to live in a more integrated way?
Chapter One: 18 Ways Poker is Like Life
Chapter Two: 9 or 10 Reasons to Bring Your Spiritual Practice to the Poker Table
Chapter Three: What is a Spiritual Practice, Anyway?
Chapter Four: Facing Death
Chapter Five: Facing Aggression, Anger & Hatred
Chapter Six: Money
Chapter Seven: Meditation
Chapter Eight: Love
Chapter Nine: Inside and Outside
Published Feb 2016. Over 6 copies sold.
Yours for 99 cents.
I Accept Gifts & Tips
Yes, this can be considered one of my projects. I live now on a fixed income and can use all the help I can get. Perhaps you would like to go ahead and buy something from me?
Buy Dagger Jameswood Enters the Fourth Dimension
Dagger e-book $4.99 at your favorite shop
Or you could get
I think of all the free stuff I offer kind of like playing the guitar on a street corner, guitar case open to those who toss in some cash. Thanks in advance for anything you can give. I understand how, for you, there may be some desire to give without buying anything.