I'm no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed ...
Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin...
It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entai...
I was born 'Harmony,' and it was weird because when I was a little kid, I was picked on so much that when I was 13, I changed my name to Harmful. I thought it was a tougher name, so I had it legally changed. And then, I don't know, it just didn't see...
I'd like to shower and change clothes," she said. "Would you mind waiting for me a half hour?" The question seemed to amuse him. "Not at all," he said with exaggerated formality. "Please take all the time you need." Michael watched her walk away. Did...
Music is the great unifier. It doesn’t matter which country you’re in or what language is being spoken, the fans just magically seem to get it. They share a common goal of love and celebration for the purity of magnificence and brilliance that ha...
Though beauty is autonomous, there seem to be occasions when human presence can become congruent with her will. In creative work no amount of force or mechanical management can guarantee beauty. Suddenly, without expecting it, beauty is there. Yet ul...
…We had spiritually marked ourselves. This marking began…when the counterculture of political correctness began, and the assault on Christian values and traditions began. At first it seemed so ridiculous that it was harmless, kind of like a disea...
We humans always seem to take a manipulative posture. No matter what the particulars of the situation, or the subject matter, we prepare ourselves to say whatever we want in order to prevail in the conversation. Each of us seeks to find some way to c...
Madame Bellwings, Memoir Elf Coordinator, was not at all pleased with this request, because elves who write the memoirs of teenage girls have the habit of returning to the magical realm with atrocious grammar. They can't seem to shake the phrases "wa...
So very offensive the gospel is, and of course, it's pointing out where I was so sure of being right but in fact was so very wrong! At first I turned so hard against it, but now I find myself so in love with it's blunt honest truth. We need more of t...
Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, the processes of coordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the coordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a grou...
…and yet, at the end of it all, a few very broad lines did seem to stick out, like the primary colors in a painting that explain all the confusing blends. And once I had understood my artificial convention, as one understands a convention of the th...
I found that those friends of mine who welcomed the unseen into the realm of their seen offered immediate understanding. Some are Christians, some are not. Most are artists of some kind or other; artistry can extend to a way of being, of living lovin...
We seem to live in a world where forgetting and oblivion are an industry in themselves and very, very few people are remotely interested or aware of their own recent history, much less their neighbors'. I tend to think we are what we remember, what w...
Timing is a big factor in seeing our desires met, and God’s timing is perfect. Do not give up on a dream if it seems impossible or out of reach. Nothing is impossible for Yahweh! However, because man has the gift of free will and continually choose...
I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-c...
From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physic...
Blake smiled while greeting him and turned to introduce me to his friend from Camp Lejeune. Blake made the formal introductions while I studied the two distinguished men. I liked the way they both carried themselves in a dignified manner with confide...
There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed OK at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of conseque...
He did recall that the summer after graduating from college before he joined the state police he had read Shakespeare. It was the pure language that stupefied him. He would be in a diner reading and his acquaintances were confident he was studying fo...
