Dumb

This week, I hate Mary. It’s all so easy for her, isn’t it? God gives her a kid. She already has a great fiancé, the kind of guy who believes you when you say God knocked you up. Let’s not forget: she’s about to become one of the top ten subjects of representational artwork on […]

Dance Lessons

Dancing begins when women are brave. A man can almost never begin the dancing. Women dancing alone, or with one friend, might be weird or need to claim they are drunk, but men dancing alone have to be drag queens or rock stars. Ideally, two or three women will begin the dancing. One woman dancing […]

Dickens, Capitalism, and Jesus

I believe in Charles Dickens Christmas. Magnificent capitalist Christmas is fun, too. I like spending outrageous sums of money once a year. It’s exciting. Sometimes I even believe in Jesus Christmas. Charles Dickens Christmas is “mankind is my business” and drinks for everyone. It’s also Scrooge, wonderful Scrooge, so bitter and angry and not giving […]

Harvest

Anything can be dangerous. Four months ago, I walked from the monastery to downtown Atchison. I had been cloistered for three days. Everything I read, and almost everything I saw and heard, was spiritual in aim. I thought I’d better put myself back in the real world a little, like you put a fish, still […]