Age 19 on, I wore only garments. Dri Lux boxer-brief bottoms and 50–50 cotton-poly blend tops. After seven years, you forget what it feels like to wear boxers or have a t-shirt against bare torso.
Okay, so let’s say I kneel down and say, “God, thank you for ____________” Just fill in the blank. Literally any good thing can go there.
What does it mean for me to thank God thusly? It means I assume he (just using the pronoun I grew up…
It said just leave me alone.
His body, folded over in its metal chair, swaying as though pacing, side to side.
The lesson was Adam and Eve, and at the crux this: God gave a commandment they were supposed to know to break. Why would he ever?
“I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.” -The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
I developed it walking the packed-dirt streets of La Quinta or Guernica, maybe Spegazzini. An analogy of sorts. About two passports: one issued by the government, legit as you can get; the other identical but counterfeit.
John, you’ve got this pull in my memory far out of proportion to your mass. And it’s no pejorative statement on your stature, just a metaphor: I knew other English faculty far better than I knew you.
Two pages, single-sided, folded in eighths — though the final fold happens at an angle so that when the blessing opens, the bottom crease of the top left quadrant slants up and to the right, where in the middle of the page it meets a new crease that…
You sit in a theater-like room together, listening to a voice of authority — male, official-sounding — making promises to you.
If you’re a man, you’re on track to be a king and high priest to God.
Father-son: An annual outing held in spring, to commemorate the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery on May 15, 1829. Hormel Chili and Oreos, sleeping bags and pillows splayed out in the back of a Suburban (who needs a tent?).
Shaaaaaking like a dog ____-ing razor blades…
That’s just the sort of thing you might hear playing from the little CD-player-boombox I kept beside me on the middle seat of my ’86…