On The Flying Trapeze

Sam Keen Ponders How To Be Free

I think trapeze could provide an excellent liturgy for a new society. Our present public liturgies, like football and basketball, are a kind of ritualized violence. One side has to beat the other. In trapeze, men and women cooperate to create something of transcendent beauty. A great trapeze act is a kind of performance art. Like a Navajo sand painting, it shows you something of exquisite beauty that lasts only for an instant and then is gone.

Catskill Sky Journal

Since I moved to Phoenicia, New York, the sky has become my main cultural influence. I can’t afford to go to the movies; I have no TV; I don’t like trees, or grass. So each morning I’m relieved to see the sky appear, with her curious, fresh ideas.

After The Stillbirth

Afterward, I walked in graveyards, clearing away trash and fallen branches. I pulled up weeds that obscured the names on old headstones, though most of the names I revealed meant nothing to me. I took special care with the graves of children.

In Loco Parentis

For months afterward I had the sense that I was being questioned by reporters, or addressing a judge: For the record, Your Honor, the accident was not my fault. I plead not guilty. . . . And I was not in love with her!

The Dead Boy At Your Window

In a distant land, a woman looked upon the unmoving form of her newborn baby and refused to see what the midwife saw.

Photographs By Bruce Horowitz

I was working at a youth center, introducing seven- to eleven-year-olds to photography, when someone told me about a carnival-supply store that sold cases of toy cameras for about a quarter apiece. They were called Banner cameras and were made of black and turquoise plastic. I had to tape up the backs to help the film advance.

Aphrodite