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Consumerism
The Technology Of Simplicity
When I was eleven or twelve, I used to go deer hunting with my father. He would wake me before dawn on cold, crisp October days, and we would dress silently in the dim glow of a night light, not wanting to awaken the rest of the house.
July 1996Sunbeams
March 1996The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.
Keys
Reading the rosary, giving a milagro to celebrate, dipping boxer shorts in a freezing lake
January 1996Sunbeams
December 1995Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
Mr. Handyperson
A house is a remarkable multipurpose system made to provide shelter from heat and cold, security from a wide range of wild animals both primeval and contemporary, privacy, refuge, an investment, a statement, a hobby.
August 1994An Inventory Of Timelessness
What I’m saying is that we in the late twentieth century live not in a city or country, not on a planet, but in a collective dream. Our everyday world is one of dreamlike instantaneous changes, unpredictable metamorphoses, random violence, archetypal sex, and a threatening sense of multiple meaning.
July 1994The Way Of Peace
Wherever we may live, each of us is aware that there is an ever-mounting confusion in the world. This loss of orientation, this degeneration of values, is not restricted to any particular class or nation. Wherever we live, at whatever level of society, we are aware of conflict and misery that seem to have no end.
February 1993Saturday Matinee
I don’t recall what film was showing that day. I like to remember it as a John Wayne epic, fairly spurting with cinematic testosterone. My platoon was too busy pelting uniformed enemy personnel and innocent bystanders alike with a merciless fusillade of navy beans. The cavernous Birmingham held more than a thousand kids, so there was plenty of chaos to camouflage our bean-shooter blitzkrieg. There’s nothing like the havoc wreaked by smooth-bore bean shooters in the free-fire zone of a dark, crowded, noisy theater.
January 1993How To Kiss The American Dream Goodbye
Here’s one small metaphorical leap from travel literature: the journey of life can be enjoyed even in cheap hotels. This idea is standard in any folk philosophy — better to have modest means and do what you enjoy. Even in the carpeted corridors of yuppiedom, people are considering “downsizing” their frenetic careers, although this is more a search for sanity than the pursuit of an ideal. What I advocate is more radical than winching down from six digits of income to five.
January 1993
