Recent
Ensamples
Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via
Lipstick
Pig is revelation. Revealing is when what’s here is hidden then seen. It’s really many individual ones, though widely considered they’re the same, and all the individuals are related, perhaps only proximately at first, but also in ways they themselves don’t initially see. + Key is it’s here. Problem is we don’t see it. Action
Not For Teacher
There’s an unfortunate instructor-y thing where the guy on stage [I’ve found it’s usually a male doing this] asks a question he already knows the answer to, one of the people in the audience … err, classroom … is the target, the answer given is wrong, and the stagehand just goes and gives the answer
Diminishing Me
You’d think a guy’d remember if it was the first time he’d seen a body but I didn’t not at first. [Hadda chance to graduate from college into one of our acceptable wars but didn’t, into the war that is, and no shot at a medical profession: left HS Chem as it had only 28
Random
Being That Guy
Once after one of my MFA professors had said the work we were reading was neither good nor original, the student who’d produced the pages wailed, But … but this actually happened! So what? He said. * I think François Truffaut said everyone in fiction is crazy, and the problem is to render this craziness
Jesus All The Way Down
The other day I wrote about having no hope. More specifically no hope in this world, more specifically because the hopes we had have been hammered against hardened sand and dirt and clay, that is, against the rocks. That may be the basic choice in life: Heart hardened … or Hopes hammered … And then
Unintelligent Design
Your plan is not working, they say. Ah, but my plan is working, we respond. (I just haven’t fully implemented it, yet … ) But look at the results you’re getting, they say. Things a’gonna change, just you wait, comes our reply. * The truth is, our plan is working. Mine is, yours is, theirs
16 Precepts
You have asked me how to pursue learning. I pass this along in response — Move from the easier to the difficult Be cautious of speech Be slower still in frequenting places of talk Embrace purity of conscience Pray without ceasing Love your home and to be there often Show geniality to all Pay no heed to others’