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A Christmas Message

Letter From unVacationland

The view from the kitchen window is pretty-damned decent, and would encourage one to go on cooking. All looks fairly right with the world. Old friends, guests for the week, are playing and laughing in the backyard despite the drawbacks of the K-Mart badminton set.

Some Success

The Match

There was a woman with one desire: to win a tennis game with God. She invited God to play tennis. God agreed and they set a date: Saturday, March 3.

No Bars To Freedom

Bo Lozoff’s Letters To And From Prisoners

Dear Billy,
Nice to hear from you. You know, you said that you were a coward and a real piece of shit, but if that’s so, then who was the sensitive, intelligent human being who was moved to tears by the story of Gandhi’s courage? That takes a lot of courage and openness, too, you know.

Letters From The Road

Greetings from the Laundry Basket, or more accurately THE LAUNDRY B SKET, a laundromat in Austin. The tall and weathered man next to me has been listening to Talk Radio: an anti-pornography Texan made the shrewd point that cigarettes can’t be advertised on TV. Then time ran out.

The Decline Of The City Of Light

The Secret Of Life

I recall another day back in junior high. He wrote upon the blackboard large: DNA/RNA. He pointed to the letters lying there like some Kabbalistic mantra, then said, “This is the secret of life.”

Why I Like Dead People

I like dead bodies: at no other time am I so aware of my own animation. This isn’t because I am lucky and this poor fool is not, but because here before me is the mute, incontrovertible evidence. Some force drives these shells, and it drives me still. I am a witness, an attestant, to a foresworn truth.

Fear Strikes Out

A pen pal of mine in a nearby state recently published her first novel and was surprised when it was referred to under the heading of women’s fiction. She had never placed herself in any category, and wondered what the term meant.