Review of Joseph Campbell's The Mythic Dimension
From the January 27, 2008 edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
The symbology of religion is, in many of its most essential elements, common to the whole of the human race; so that, no matter to what religion you may turn, you will - if you look long enough - find a precise and often illuminating counterpart . . . of your own tradition."
So claims Joseph Campbell, a professor of mythology at Sarah Lawrence College, who saw religion as a universal human language, similar in many respects to music with its common rhythms and leitmotifs.
Ghost Dance
From the Winter 2007 edition of Epicenters:Not even seven in the morning and already the bisecting vapor trails of a hundred jets obscured the pale blue October sky like the crisscrossing telephone cables and the tangled grid of electric lines suspended above the parking lot, corralling her within this gilded pen like some mindless beast of burden and inspiring her, as it did every morning with ritualistic inevitability, to light her first cigarette of the day and take in a gratifying lungful of smoke, the one and only drag that tasted any damned good, the rest merely a form of habit and imprisonment like much else in life. The idea of ritual pleased her, however, because it suggested something communal, an agreed upon set of beliefs, values, collective grievances, and it gave her great comfort to know that all across the country millions of addicts were simultaneously taking that first puff of the day with a fanaticism that was if not exactly religious then certainly sacramental.
Review of Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought"
From the Sunday, November 4, 2007 edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
This fall, I just had finished watching the first three acts of “Measure for Measure” at the Ohio Theatre when I overheard a heated exchange at a lobby table nearby. Both men were trying to conceal their irritation behind strained tones of civility. The first insisted that William Shakespeare was at best a nom de plume for a remarkable genius - Christopher Marlowe? Francis Bacon? Queen Elizabeth? - and at worst an outright impostor. The other fellow, sputtering, insisted that the first recant his heretical beliefs.
On returning home, I opened Steven Pinker’s “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature” and was pleased to find that the celebrated Harvard professor of psychology takes up the case of Shakespeare. Thanks to Pinker, I soon learned - a freighted word, as it turns out - that the two men were quibbling not over the existence of the bard, but over a largely unconscious form of cultural indoctrination.
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The Black Death of Gentile da Foligno
From Issue 18 of Perigee:
The newspapers provided the abominable details: another woman slain, her mutilated corpse discovered in a dark alley on the Westside, her throat slashed with what must have been a long, serrated blade used for the sole purpose of butchering animals. Father James Mullins read the story with an indifference so alien to him that he later puzzled over it and wondered if he, too, had finally succumbed to the modern evil of apathy, but he sensed that something far more insidious had wormed its way into his mind, something still in its larval stage but potentially capable of wreaking great havoc. He sighed, his face sinking with resignation, and when he tried to summon forth from the ravaged labyrinth of his memory a comforting passage from Marcus Aurelius—hardly a man who might lend comfort in such matters—he became distracted by the boy peering over his shoulder and breathing in his ear.
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In the Cutting of Carrots
From the July 2007 edition of Boundoff:There is an ascending and descending order in the cutting of carrots. Think of a musical scale. The slicing of carrots can be a precise thing, like fingers gliding nimbly over the keys of a piano, octave after octave, shimmering glissandos, rolling arpeggios, a forward momentum, a driving rhythm, a skill that is unquestionably athletic as well as artistic. Any chef who has for a decade or more devoted himself to the cutting of carrots will tell you the same thing. I am not the only one. My colleagues are all in agreement on this point. Yet the diners who anesthetize themselves with a bottle or two of cabernet, the ones who devour too quickly and too merrily the salads and entrees prepared for them by these madmen with their strange devotion to gastronomic virtuosity, would never suspect that so much precision goes into so small a detail. But if you pause for a moment to consider the matter, if you think of your favorite novel or symphony or philosophical insight, you might find that the greatest accomplishments are really just reflections of some kind of madness. After all, who else but a madman would devote himself year after year to the cutting of carrots?
The Distinguished Precipice
From the August 2007 edition of The Cynic Online Magazine:On the afternoon of his seventeenth birthday, Patrick Hanlon was summoned to the principal’s office where an assembly of priests, eleven in all, faded men in high backed chairs, waited in the steely winter light, their eyes fixed to the branches of the elms and maples clattering against the windowpanes, their arthritic fingers reaching automatically for the books of matches piled high in ashtrays stationed at every corner of the room like bowls of holy water at the entranceways to the school chapel. It had been a gloomy winter, gloomier than usual even for that the gloomiest of cities, Cleveland, and like the weary ghosts who inhabited the crumbling warehouses and clapboard shanties and stone churches hunkered down in high snowdrifts transmuted into sculptures of strange shape and contour--giant locusts and gnats and dead fish floating white and blue in the tundra--the priests endured with a stoicism they’d perfected over long decades the gusts and gales that came screaming off the icy lake.
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Aphrodisiac
From the 2007 edition of Green Hills Literary Lantern:
As the loud music died down and fused into a moderate jazz tempo, easy on the percussion, heavy on the acoustic guitar, Nancy parted her lips and smiled in a way that seemed, at least to McDougal, more than a bit flirtatious. She stared at him from her perch on the barstool, the hem of her black cocktail dress creeping toward her thighs, her face partially obscured by the glowing red blobs of a lava lamp, her eyes lost in an otherworldly swirl of shadow and light. He felt obliged to stare back, to flash her some sign of his virility and desire, but he felt nothing for this woman, only a mild sense of revulsion that he hoped wasn’t too obvious (she reeked of vermouth and cheap perfume), but when she fished an olive out of her martini glass with her fingers and then chewed it with great deliberation as if searching slowly with her tongue for the pimento, he could no longer disguise his loathing and looked down to study the second hand on his watch.
Same Old Story (10th Anniversary Edition)
From the Summer 2007 edition of Non-Euclidean Cafe:Here at last was our chance to succumb to new temptations (if one must think of such things as being so unabashedly sinful, so improper, so lascivious and corrupt, as to call them temptations), a long evening dawdling in sophomoric reverie beneath a bridge in the bustling neon funhouse of the Flats, twittering mischievously as we passed around a flask, our parched lips ready to accept the magical metamorphosis that would inevitably ensue, our hearts beating with the anticipation of the Kingsbury Run Killer, a ghost from the city’s past, our eyes darting back and forth from shadows to bright buzzing streetlights, searching for a sign of the cops, stone-faced Celtic henchman rumored to lurk behind the deteriorating concrete supports near the edge of the Cuyahoga River. An excursion into the forbidden, an escapade into the realm of “low rent,” of something less than the middle class mediocrity to which we had become unwittingly accustomed.
Dumb Lumbering Beasts
From the July 3, 2007 edition of Identity Theory:Three men stood statue-like in an isolated corner of the otherwise bustling loft, gazing in mock adoration and secret scorn at the outlandish clay sculpture blocking their view of the rooftops, church steeples and crumbling smokestacks of Ohio City. The sculpture, by far the largest exhibit in the newly restored warehouse, seemed to wobble back and forth as if pushed by invisible fingers of heat. It leaned against the windowpane like some self-important plus-sized model posing for the paparazzi, its impressive girth preventing the pungent air of evening, both sulfurous and sweet, from sweeping into the cavernous space and filtering out the smoke of cigars and cigarettes and the poorly disguised scent of hashish.
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Uncreated Creatures
From the April 2007 edition of The Stickman Review:I am no sexual dynamo. It takes a big man to admit as much, but I believe that all men are inept lovers to some degree, clumsy and insensitive. On this point most women will surely concur. Among great apes the sex act is not the stuff of Shakespearean sonnets and English flower gardens. Male chimpanzees climax with quickness and ease; they seem to understand the brute necessity for reproduction and the importance of passing on their genes. Human males aren’t so different. On average (and in this regard I am quite average) a man orgasms in a mere four minutes, a disheartening statistic for any woman hoping to fulfill some erotic fantasy, the details of which may have been carefully worked out weeks, or even months, in advance. It is perhaps for this reason that most women in a committed relationship never bother with infidelity. And yet there is a paradox here. Unlike men who tend to be visual creatures, always sizing up height and weight and firmness of tit, women are much more discriminating, selecting mates who will make for excellent long-term partners; they look for certain qualities in a man: stability, intelligence, sanity. A tall order to fill, no doubt. Odds are much better that they’ll find someone or something—man, woman, vibrator—that can pleasure them physically rather than emotionally and spiritually.
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Eyes Wide Shut: Kubrick's Epic of Copulation
From Issue #7 of Mad Hatter's Review:When director Stanley Kubrick’s final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut was released posthumously in summer 1999 (shortly before rumors spread that Tom Cruise and a band of disgruntled Scientologists had him “silenced” for what they felt was an unflattering portrayal of their secret society) there was a public uproar over its paradoxically realistic and outlandishly stylized depictions of sexuality. Some critics brazenly dismissed it as “a sex movie made by a dirty old man,” though perhaps madman would have been more apropos, considering Kubrick seems to fit into that category of latter day prophet-philosopher-artist, not unlike Nietzsche and de Maupassant and Schubert, syphilitic geniuses one and all, ironic considering the psycho-sexual themes of the film. Of course there is no evidence that Kubrick contracted much less died of a venereal disease.
The Desperation Follies
From the February 2007 edition of Undergound Voices:
Zihuatanejo, Mexico, a once remote fishing village north of Acapulco, has in recent years become a destination for savvy gringos who want to avoid the crowds in the usual tourist spots like Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Cozumel and the all-inclusive resorts sprouting up along Baja and the Yucatan. But like those better known places, Zihuatanejo caters mainly to Americans who hesitate to leave the safety and comfort of their hotels and rarefied social circles to wander the narrow, litter-strewn streets of the barrio (think of crushed cans of Tecate and Modelo Especial in the gutters and packs of mangy dogs scampering through the evil-smelling alleys) where portly men in ragged clothes accost you at every turn to buy worthless trinkets. Little wooden lizards painted in the festive colors of the tropics, chess pieces whittled from soapstone that snap in two or disintegrate before you can capture your opponent’s queen, bottles of mescale and absinthe, overpriced Cuban cigars, costume jewelry made of copper and glass. And we must not forget the occasional dope peddler who, with the slightest shift of his eyes, tries to sell you “the real McCoy, and, ah, senor, maybe a pipe for you? hand-carved, eh? do you like the leering skull?” Yes, a sort of Mexican memento mori, a reminder to the hapless tourist that your trip might end in total disaster. “Smoke up, for tomorrow we die.” My trip did coincide after all with the Mexican Day of the Dead.
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My Summer in an Evangelical Gulag
From the January 2007 edition of PerigeeLake Cumberland, one of the largest man-made lakes in the United States, stretches along the misty hills and valleys of the notorious bible belt of southern Kentucky near the Tennessee border. There the educated elite, barricaded inside fortified vacation resorts like medieval royalty seeking refuge from marauding barbarians, wile away the hours, boating and fishing and drinking bourbon on the rocks with a practiced air of ennui. Last summer I visited one such resort, and because I quickly grew weary of lounging beside a pool and chasing after my two-year old daughter (a Marie Antoinette in the making), I dared to leave our impregnable compound with its battalion of nervous security guards and journeyed into the heart of darkness where, among the winding roads and four-lane stretches of highway, there raged a cultural conflagration the likes of which I have never seen.
Sati
From the January 2007 edition of Denver Syntax:
The cemetery came with the house — that was part of the deal — but the old woman assured me that there wasn’t much in the way of maintenance. “Mow the grass before it gets completely out of hand, pick the weeds if that suits you, put the headstones back in place whenever a storm blows through the valley or if those goddamn teenagers wander down the road and knock them over.” And she also told me, between long sips of Irish coffee and drags on her cigarette, that I had no obligation to provide guided tours should any visitors show up, not that I had to worry much about visitors since the old covered bridge that spanned the rapids had been washed away in a flashflood last summer. Now there was no direct connection with the main highway, only a narrow ribbon of gravel road that zigzagged its way along steep cliffs of mudrock and shale to the valley floor, then skirted the pestilential fens and bogs until it reached the vast meadow and the forlorn stone house that sat atop a low hill like an oracle waiting for a wizened seer to make grim pronouncements.
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Cyclops
From the Issue #4 2006 edition of CerebrationWhite sunlight pierced the cracked, mud-encrusted windshield of the pickup truck, stinging my one good eye. The woods, green and lush and wild in the full heat of summer, became an impressionistic blur. With trembling fingers I adjusted my eye patch, desperate to see where I was being taken. Dirt and gravel churned beneath the tires of the truck as Hollerin’ Bob, laughing with raucous child-like glee, stomped on the accelerator. Thick rivulets of brown saliva trickled down his scruffy chin. The truck fishtailed and careened toward a ditch. Suppressing a sharp cry of pain, I searched the seat for the pocket flashlight, screwdriver, drill bit, whatever the hell it was that gouged the small of my back, but my fingers only scraped a thin layer of grime from the vinyl before finding my copy of
Ulysses. I clutched the book to my chest as though it were a talisman because a small part of me still believed that the words of a great writer could protect me from the chaos of life in Gehenna, Ohio. I need only find the correct page and with the proper awe and reverence recite a passage in the plodding monotone of my perpetually glowering professors.
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Monsters of Antiquity
From the December 2006 edition of Smokebox:Like most dreams this one begins in media res.
I was incarcerated in an old industrial complex not unlike those abandoned, asbestos-filled warehouses that crowd the neglected streets and labyrinthine alleys of my hometown Cleveland. Around the crumbling ruin of this makeshift prison stretched an imposing gray wall topped with glimmering razor wire. Rumors circulated that the wall had a secret opening, a small hole just big enough for a man to squeeze through and make his way back home to friends and family. At certain times during the day prisoners were marched outside and permitted to stretch in a narrow concrete pen along the wall, but no one dared search for the opening in broad daylight. Somehow I knew, with the inexplicable logic of all dreams, that this “exercise yard” was frequently used for other, more diabolical things. When the guards informed us that it was time for our daily “exercise,” many of my fellow inmates would turn pale, cling to their cots, kick their legs like small children, scream for mercy.
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Jazz & Cocktails at the Center of the World
From the November 2006 edition of Fringe MagazineDuring a trip to New York City several years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
It happened this way. I was visiting my friends, Kevin and Kathlene, who like thousands of other ambitious twenty-somethings had moved to the city to seek out their fortune, and even though fortune was a little slow in arriving, had in fact been delayed indefinitely, they nevertheless assumed an air of sophistication and decadence. From a distance and in silhouette Kevin and Kathlene looked like those svelte, stiffly posed figures you see in Jazz Age advertisements, all sharp angles and long lines, a man and woman sipping martinis while standing at a penthouse window; a flapper in a sequined dress, a dandy in a tux, templates used by graphic artists who designed the programs for the latest Gershwin or Cole Porter musical. Girl Crazy, Oh, Kay!, Anything Goes. Whenever they were nearby I heard, or at any rate imagined I heard, muted trumpets, saxophones, syncopated rhythms, Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” Ellington at the Cotton Club...
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The Deer Park
From Issue 14 (Oct.-Jan. 2006) of Perigee Magazine:
No one could convince Patrick Butler that what he was doing was wrong, not his friends who could only guess at the truth, not the cabdriver who would soon discover the truth for himself, not even the eternally dour parish priest to whom he confessed everything on Saturday mornings before joining his fiancée for brunch at the corner diner. Suddenly there were too many moral crusaders in the world, each with his own improbable scheme for how to lead a man to salvation, through prayer, repentance, self-flagellation, a million cures for a million vices, but when he looked through the scrim that separated reality from the hereafter Patrick Butler saw only the fiery pools of hell. Having already dipped his toes in the scalding waters, he wondered if he would ever muster up enough courage to immerse himself fully in what the priest described as “total depravity.” Of course the priest had no way of knowing just how sublime the crackling embers of the abyss could be. Or maybe he did. Butler trusted no one...
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Hack
From the Fall 2006 issue of Megaera:
Harbinger College placed a high value on the written word, and its literary magazine, The Millstone was nationally recognized as one of the finest produced by any college or university, its stories and poems one step removed from the divine Logos, its contributors destined to achieve great things, heirs to the throne of Updike and Carver, Bellow and Cheever. Coping with the death of a loved one--grandfather, stepmother, family dog--seemed a favorite storyline as well as secret, homoerotic liaisons that ended in either comedy or tragedy, but despite its sometimes repetitive themes I invariably picked up a copy whenever a new edition came out. They were scattered around campus like stale breadcrumbs left for chirping sparrows.
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Baptism
From the Fall 2004 edition of Kant Magazine:
After his obligatory eruption of rage in which he slapped his daughter not once but several across the face, after he hurled her against the bookshelf and watched as the encyclopedias rained down on her head, James McCarthy slumped into an armchair and began to formulate a plan, one so obvious in its logic and simplicity, that he laughed at himself for not having thought of it before. These tantrums of his never solved anything. He had a moral obligation to set things straight, and he would make certain that something good would come of this bleak situation...
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Review of Paul Auster'sThe Brooklyn Follies
From the spring 2006 edition of Ascent Aspirations:
Paul Auster, now regarded as a major American writer by many critics, ordinarily concerns himself with large, abstract notions of fate, destiny, chance, coincidence and other quasi-mystical matters typically categorized as existential in nature. Auster is, after all, fluent in French and has translated the work of many obscure French poets into English. He may also be the closest thing we have in this country to a café society intellectual. Like some of the better known writers of post-war Paris, Auster examines the dark side of human nature; think of Sartre’s No Exit with its famous adage “Other people are hell” and Camus’ The Stranger with its bleak insight “A man who has lived only one day can easily live for a hundred years in prison. He will have enough memories to keep him from being bored.”
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Hollywood Mainstream
From the Summer 2006 edition of Crush Magazine:The island is just the kind of place that some second-rate Hollywood producer might envision when he decides to finance “the feel good film of the year.” Hoping to make a small fortune (or even a large one) by manipulating the emotions of less discriminating moviegoers, the producer would gleefully exploit the conventional theme park quality of the place—the old corner store with its weathered signpost out front, the church steeple looming above the oaks and elms, the rustic cottages dotted along the waterfront, the well-preserved middle aged couples rocking back and forth on the verandahs, the sleepy dogs tethered to frayed leashes, and of course we must not forget the quiet lanes and lonely roads where the only sounds you will hear are the gentle rustle of leaves and the distant squeak-squeak of a bicycle as an old man pedals toward the docks. If scandalous stories abound here, and of course they do, they are so well hidden that only a heartfelt Hollywood movie would dare allude to them, if only accidentally, and even then it would require the labors of a dozen screenwriters to plumb the depths...
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Ritualized Stupidity: American Schools and the Culture of Vulgarity
From the summer 2006 edition of The Rough Road Review:Allow me explain why I believe the American education system, at least in its present form, is doomed to extinction (for members of the religious fringe who believe dinosaur bones were placed in the earth to confuse scientists, you may substitute the objectionable Darwinian term “extinction” with something a little more innocuous like “hellfire”).
In his latest tome The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, a book that is impressive for its almost Tolstoyan length as well as its seemingly inexhaustible catalogue of plot summaries, British author and journalist Christopher Booker analyzes hundreds of novels and films and comes to the sad if obvious conclusion that American stories are lacking in themes of individual self-development and growth; the heroes of such stories fail to become fully mature adults capable of functioning in society in humane and meaningful ways and who seem to seek, as the highest prize, “the approbation of the crowd.”
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Gehenna
From the Winter 2005 edition of Keep Going:This is what they did to him, to the old man, after a lifetime spent in quiet contemplation among books of eschatology.
They paraded him before the students on high holy days like some kind of sacred relic not unlike the shriveled and mummified thumb or toe of a medieval saint or mystic, an object to be revered as a symbol of piety, celibacy, wisdom, and dread. The old man, long since retired from teaching, had been given the title “Instructor Emeritus,” an honorific bestowed on those priests too ancient and addle-minded to continue functioning without embarrassment or scandal in a classroom. It was generally believed that these appearances, though rare and often ritualized, would satisfy his need to be among the students, his proverbial “lost flock” whose intellectual curiosity seemed to dwindle with each passing moment. The problem was that despite being partially blind in one eye and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, the old man was more agile than most octogenarians, and the Jesuits found it difficult to manage him. Taking him to mass in the morning became particularly trying. During the Lord’s Prayer he recited soliloquies from Hamlet, during the Te Deum he hummed Irish airs and dances, and—perhaps worst of all—during the celebration of the Eucharist he shook his head as though in disagreement. Or was it in disbelief? The Jesuits were never sure...
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The Bloated Tick
From the spring 2004 edition of The Oklahoma Review:Every morning for the past five months the Gonk arrived early at the service garage where he stood behind an orange tarp and cut elaborate butterflies out of scrap metal with a welding torch. This drove us to distraction because we had no idea why anyone would want to come in early for any reason let alone to make butterflies. The Gonk smoked cigarettes under his welding hood. He scratched his balls with a chipping hammer. He mumbled things under his breath. He worked as though in a trance...
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No Deposit Love
From the January 2005 edition of Juked:
Thursday afternoon, like so many before and after it, saw me broke and desperate for a beer, and I spent an hour, maybe two, I'm not sure how long really, I no longer wear a watch, scrounging for loose change in the pockets of old winter jackets, digging beneath the ragged cushions of the sofa, reaching behind the silent refrigerator, it no longer hummed, the electricity had been shut off weeks ago, looking under the throw rugs, behind the toilet, inside the broom closet and, though I pitied myself for doing something so obviously futile, beneath the piss-and-sweat-stained mattress where instead of money I unearthed an assortment of dirty magazines...
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Safe and Familiar Faces
From the fall 2004 edition of Slow Trains Literary Journal:
Having finished breakfast an hour ago, we were now on to the second part of our daily routine, walking along a shaded pathway in the park and talking in a way that, despite everything, still had an undertone of reticence and timidity about it.
"People should only get married after they reach forty," I said. "There should be a law. I mean, there's a certain amount of wisdom you need before taking the wedding vows, certain kinds of experiences you must have, awful experiences, something to harden the soul before a long winter."
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Refuge
From the summer 2004 edition of Thunder Sandwich:
Through the high grass of the fallow field, two boys, ages nine and ten, marched in step while whistling a melody they'd heard over and over again on the radio that summer. The bright quarter notes sailed toward the sagging roof of an abandoned barn in the distance and disappeared through a window near the peak. One shard of glass dangled from the sill like the rotten tooth of a jack-o-lantern and glimmered in the late afternoon sun, momentarily blinding the boys whenever they looked in that direction. Jimmy, the oldest of the two, cleared a swath of weeds and wildflowers with a large stick that swoosh-swooshed through the air, one wide arc after another. Toby, the younger and more contemplative one, followed close behind, shooing away the occasional bee and dragonfly, his knees and shins crisscrossed with angry scratches crusted over with blood, his fingers stained with dark juices from having ventured into a thicket of bushes where he'd picked wild berries and placed them gently, one by one, into the small wooden box he now cradled in his arms...
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Artifact
From the Summer 2005 edition of The Plum Ruby Review:
On a sunny afternoon in late September, I, the librarian and curator of the vast and renowned Fitzgerald Collection, stood before one of the stained glass windows and watched a throng of businesspeople hurry out of their office buildings and swarm the little public park in order to secure their usual benches next to the magnificent marble putti that pissed high arcs of water into the fountain. Uniformly shrouded in solemn gray suits, pale and glassy-eyed from hours and years and decades spent inside a hive of cubicles, the men and women now stretched their legs and smiled as they nibbled on hotdogs purchased from the corner vendor, sipped lattes and designer waters, intermittently commented on passersby, and all but ignored the vast wall of clouds gathering on the horizon, great, billowing, lead-colored things that, at least for a moment, looked like mountains with craggy granite peaks and snow tipped caps before metamorphosing into a hundred other phantasmagoric shapes—anvils, mushroom clouds, the monstrous swells of an angry sea. Up until then the day had been a tranquil one, warm and pleasant, but as the clouds gained momentum and blew in off Lake Erie, sparrows suddenly went silent and fluttered out of treetops. A gust of wind stirred branches and rattled windows. Newspapers swirled high in the air and disappeared down the deep canyon of 9th Street, a cyclone of sordid celebrity gossip and astrological twaddle. Flower petals and candy bar wrappers and Styrofoam cups bounced along curbs and into alleyways...
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The Burdens and Cruelties of Affluence
From the October 2005 edition of The Wissahickon:
Through that terrible labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways littered with broken bottles and permeating with the dark stench of week-old garbage, under the chaotic web of clotheslines heavy with dripping denim and flannel, into the shadows, into the "real shit" as she used to say long ago, before the munificent al-zahir bestowed upon her a life of unprecedented success and recognition, the woman in the black cocktail dress moved like one of the feral cats following at her heels. They mewled for a morsel of food, and because she detested animals of all kinds and so loathed their dumb incomprehension of the world that she went to extremes, avoiding zoos, avoiding aviaries, avoiding even the brightly colored coral when she went snorkeling, she kicked at them, clumsily, almost falling into a puddle, but they were too quick for her, knew the ways of this neighborhood and always kept a safe distance from the menacing figures that hurried through its silent shadows. With cold, almost omniscient eyes they observed her from behind a dumpster and hissed their disapproval. Violence and charity, like life and death, came in equal measures here. Still, one could never be too cautious. Naiveté often proved fatal...
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Samsara
From the winter 2005 edition of Fiction Warehouse:
The truly ironic thing about Joe Monahan's funeral, among the thousand ironic details from which I can choose, is the fact that I'd been asked by his wife to deliver the eulogy. I flew in from sunny Kauai that morning and arrived at the small stone church just as the hearse, mud splattered after a long drive through the streets of Cleveland, pulled up to the front door. This was the second week of an interminable cold snap, and the six pallbearers, stone faced as the gargoyles perched above the gothic arches, lowered their heads into the February gale and lifted the casket with as much solemnity as they could muster...
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The Spy
From the May 2004 edition of Subtle Tea:
On a lazy Saturday afternoon in late September, Tom Berry, a man who knew better than most how to idle away the dwindling hours of summer sunshine, smoked his last few cigarettes on the back steps of his house. He gazed up at the sky and marveled at the distorted shapes of shifting clouds. To him they seemed to form a pastoral scene in which a mangy dog lifted its leg to spray a copse of white oaks. The air, while warm and breezy, smelled sour, vaguely sulfurous, from the high-flying soot that spewed from the blast furnace of a nearby powerhouse along the Cuyahoga River...
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College, Consumerism and the New Conservative Paradigm
From the May 2006 edition of Raging Face:
America has become a conservative country and will probably remain so for at least one more generation. This has happened because the Republican Party has colonized not only Iraq but also the minds of an entire generation of Americans. The conservative paradigm about patriotism and manifest destiny in the Middle East has wheedled its way into the brains of people who are most susceptible to insipid slogans and sound bites, namely teenagers whose still developing brains somehow subsist on a steady diet of sugar, nicotine, draft beer and FOX's persistent and unapologetic harangues about milquetoast liberals and fags...
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Vigil
From the Summer 2004 edition of Exquisite Corpse:For well over one hundred years the Jesuit school has been regarded by its students, administrators and staff as a powerful beacon of uncompromisingly high moral standards, a revered symbol of Catholic piety in a once picturesque quarter of the city, an area that has since gone to seed, a forlorn place overrun by liquor stores and abandoned warehouses and diners crowded with drag queens who squabble over the price of a cup of coffee, the old neighborhood as it is sometimes called, "old" because the houses all around the school are in various states of decomposition, their foundations crumbling, their rooftops sagging, "old" because no developer has come along to tear those houses down to make room for parking lots and shopping centers and all of the other conveniences of modern life...
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The Diploma Mill
From the Februrary 2006 edition of Identity Theory:
I am an instructor of English at a small, private college near Cleveland, Ohio. With its tree-lined streets, gothic architecture and sprawling quad, the college is an idyllic setting and one that disguises some unsightly truths. Like a Hollywood movie set, the college campus is all artifice, a make-believe world where actors appear for a short time, recite their lines, and then exit the sound stage of higher education forever. I say this because the longer I teach, the more convinced I become that, in general, a college education takes the form of a very predictable and tedious script in which students are asked to memorize material and then regurgitate that material on an exam, after which time they forget everything they’ve just memorized (“learned” would be too hopeful a word), only to repeat the cycle again next semester. After four years of reciting various soliloquies in a plodding monotone, students attend a graduation ceremony that in many respects mimics the Academy Awards except for the fact that everyone, no matter his or her level of competence, is given a diploma from the dean and an ovation from the befuddled professors who seem a bit perplexed by the whole event as if it were some kind of elaborate hoax. There are, of course, many reasons for their stupefaction...
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