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Purple Nails

At dinner, I was soft-spoken, laughed a lot, and didn’t delve immediately into the deepest possible level of conversation, the way I usually do. It was somehow easy to let my date pull out my chair for me, to wait politely while he served me first, to nod and smile and gracefully sip my wine. When I did talk, my fingertips floated and flashed in the air in front of me, trailing invisible purple sparks. I have no idea what either of us said.

The Bathroom

Soaking in the tub, getting some privacy, having sex

The Trouble With Smitty

Smitty was lying on the seat beside me, getting antsy to exit his holster and have some fun. I told him to be patient. I didn’t want some rancher investigating gunshots. The dirt trail was badly rutted and washed out in a few places. It led me down into a dry creek bed at one point, and if not for four-wheel drive, I’d probably still be there. The windows were down, and I could smell the clean scent of sage.

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.

Sunbeams

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Bertrand Russell

Sunbeams

I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Psalms 139:14

Acrostic

The prison van passed through the ratty grounds, by the crumbling remains of the 1820s cellblocks and a burnt-out station wagon. The afternoon’s thick heat had turned into a yellow evening haze. Bright razor wire had curled like Christmas tinsel along walls, culverts, corners of buildings, up power poles. The Hudson River glittered at the bottom of the hill. I’d been told the inmates were expecting a new teacher. I’d be “obvious” — my age and sex and suburban neatness all crowded into one word. The prison buildings sat stubborn, old, and impenetrable. I still hadn’t seen an inmate.

Poof

Jayne, my hairdresser, has just had her eyebrows tattooed. Two black scabs arch across her forehead. “I don’t dare frown,” she says, “or they might bleed. But, oh, when the scabs fall off, my eyebrows will be deep gold, to match my new hair. And even when I go swimming, I won’t lose my face.”

Hair

A fashion show, a bike helmet, a confrontation on an elevator