A state of beingA state of being
“Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Month: December 2013
So thereSo there
“Even when God is most terrible, he is never cruel, the way men are.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
The TellingsThe Tellings
alice blue review published one of my stories, “The Tellings,” last June. I’ve added it to the Previously Published Stories sidebar.
Basic mathBasic math
“The difference between something and nothing is nothing.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Lucky brutes along the bell curveLucky brutes along the bell curve
“We are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck. The differences among us are differences of degree that do not admit of categorical division into the normal and the abnormal.” – Barbara H. Fried, “Beyond Blame”
We’ve locked ourselves up and thrown away the keysWe’ve locked ourselves up and thrown away the keys
“What grows clearer every year is that the incarcerating state is not feared. It is seen as a palliative to a fear of violent crime, a fear mobilized by political parties and candidates desperate to find points of contact with a distant and disaffected electorate. While the state has not prevented job loss, workplace disempowerment, spiraling health care costs, and the disintegration of educational institutions from kindergarten to university, those seeking official positions can gain credibility by promising to get tough on crime. What such rhetoric implies may be even more significant, namely that the state is ‘for’ the law abiding and ‘against’ offenders, that even the most economically insecure among the law-abiding have a robust civic status in comparison to the lawbreakers. To say that Americans lack a sober fear of this swollen system of cruelty—and, indeed, use it as a mode of making social distinctions—is not to discount the pain and suffering of the victims of violent crime. It is only to draw attention to something hiding in plain sight. The public is both inured to and invested in this reality that is seen too much and too little. We see it constantly in the virtual world of criminal justice television, where hard treatment, shame, and degradation of prisoners are frequently portrayed as added consequences of breaking the rules and rarely as civic problems.” – Albert W. Dzur, “Twelve Absent Men”
Roses and thornsRoses and thorns
“You can’t just wish away an unattractive part of a writer’s biography and think the work would still exist.” — Jessa Crispin, Bookslut