Here'a real dialogue with a smart guy who holds to a post-modern life stance
He has earlier declared that all books and morals are subjective and relative.
In a long detailed response, I explain that on the contrary, the study of literature is to find out what the author intended in his work.
Myself, American literature and world literature teacher:
We teachers studied literary criticism for years including the various schools. Our goal is similar to the biological sciences—to find out what is real and accurate.
However in the humanities and social sciences, it's more difficult to get at the accurate meaning than in the hard sciences.
Even in the latter, consider that the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould came to very different conclusions than some other famous biologists based upon the evidence.
For instance, his conclusion based on the facts is that deep time in biology is based in Chance!
He stated that IF reality could come again, the human species probably wouldn't even show up. We humans are here by cosmic “luck.”
In contrast evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and neuroscientist Sam Harris hold that existence, particularly for all humans and our actions would be exactly the same because everything is determined.
Allegedly, according to Harris, even IF the cosmos came again, all of us humans would do exactly the same because we are “puppets” of the cosmos.
Though, as I already said, it is more difficult to find what is true in literature and criminal justice, etc., the reason to study these fields is to find out what is objectively meant.
Subjectivity is to be avoided.
Most people find there is an objective qualitative difference between Shakespeare's plays and popular literature and the media.
For example, some of Ernest Hemingway's short stories are amazingly powerful and complex, far better than most stories, TV shows, and movies. Hemingway scholars are agreed that he hated Christianity, that his famous short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" is objectively brilliant and is a scathing attack against religion.
Post-Modernist:
Although I didn't agree with you on a fair number of things, I had held you in higher esteem than to think you would brazenly try to pass yourself off as knowledgeable about something which you can't fail to know that you know nothing about.
You didn't even want to educate yourself before responding, so you could have plausibly pretended to have known something about it. Instead, you insulted my intelligence by trying to pass off horseshit.
Daniel Wilcox
Hmm...3 universities, 5 school districts, post-graduate work, many years of teaching literature, attending post-grad conferences, etc. all taught us "horseshit."
I'll keep the horseshit;-)
Post-Modernist
Keep digging. My estimation of you just keeps going down. Either you have a problem with honesty, or senile dementia is setting it.
Either way, I'll avoid you in the future, as you're not worthy to debate.
Daniel Wilcox
Understanding the meanings of literature and basic reading comprehension tests don't register "like" or "dislike" but the ability to comprehend the texts.
Students study Shakespeare's plays because they are far better than studying inferior popular writing.
Finding what an author means when he writes is to discover the accurate view. Subjectivity needs to be avoided.
Post-Modernist
Just do me one favor, and answer the question...
Daniel Wilcox
I did answer your question and gave you two specific examples--the plays of Shakespeare and Hemingway's famous short story, "A Clean-Well-Lighted Place."
We teachers taught those for many years.
Please give me the name of a scholar who disagrees and I will read his point of view.
I also pointed out that reading comprehension tests aren't subjective.
We are seeking the accurate meanings.
Post-Modernist
The accurate meaning? According to who?
Are you trying to say that you think the point of literary criticism is to try to figure out what meaning the author was intending the reader to understand?<br>
Have I got that right? I want to give you more than ample rope with which to hang yourself.
Daniel Wilcox
In a short story, one has the author's conscious intent--the themes.
One also has the author's unconscious intent. One can see this very much in Hemingway's writing as I pointed out.
One can also check with the actual statements by the authors themselves of what they meant.
Then we need to remember the perspectives of us readers, our varying cultures versus the society and culture in which the story was created.
This is where most schools of literary interpretation come in.
Then there is also the factor, that sometimes a story (by conscious intent or not) is intentionally ambiguous. Or the story has, intriguingly, contradictory themes.
This is the basis for the outstanding work of Great Books Program which came out of the University of Chicago.
Like in any field whether philosophy or evolutionary biology or literature, there will often be disagreements about what the actual meaning is.
But, except for post-modernists, most scholars do think there is real meaning in the facts, essays, songs,and stories of humans.
Otherwise, why bother?!
Likes and dislikes don't need to be taught.
Remember my original example from the hard sciences--of how Gould's conclusions are very different from Harris and Coyne’s.
Yet all 3 do think that evolution has actual identifiable characteristics; they just haven't reached the point of figuring out which of them is correct, or if there are other possible explanations.
Ditto for literature, justice, and social sciences.
Subjectivity needs to be avoided.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Showing posts with label Hemingway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hemingway. Show all posts
Friday, May 1, 2026
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
How Writers 'Father' You
There is a story of an orphan who never knew his father. The latter had abandoned the family before he was born.
Then his mother died of cancer when he was 6.
When he reached young adulthood, the fatherless son searched and searched for years looking for any trace of his absentee father.
Finally, years later after diligent effort, a detective he had hired located the man who was now living in Portland, Oregon, married to another woman with 3 offspring who he was ignoring, too.
The fatherless son flew United, "the Friendly Skies," to Portland, anxious to meet his unknown father, but when he got to downtown, near the docks, he felt ambivalent and sat down on a quay, wondering whether he really wanted to meet.
Huge container ships and tankers moved through the rough dark waters of the Columbia River. In a way, he felt like Ismael.
Following directions that the investigator had given him, the orphan took a taxi to the posh address at shortly after sunrise, and walked up and down a wide winding sidewalk out in front of the ultra-mansion, until its owner, his father, came out the front door, and hailed the waiting taxi, got in and drove away.
The man's build was all wrong, stocky and compact; and he had walked with a lunge, as if about to attack some invisible enemy. His face was sharp with a large nose. Not at all like my skinny frame but prominent cheeks; must have gotten my body from my mother's side.
Suddenly, it hit him deeply that this stranger was of no interest to him, that he didn't know this rich man from Adam. At that he laughed, since by profession he, himself, was an evolutionary biologist and knew there had never been only one original father of the human race.
I may have gotten my genetic heritage from this stranger, but my real fathers (and my mothers besides my dying one) were the writers I read growing up, the thinkers that guided me when I had no father and had lost my mother.*
--
Well, of course, unlike this orphan, I did have a very dear father, one who used to take me fishing, hunting, and traveling, and guided me as to what was right and helped me later with major decisions. A man who stood by me, a real friend. And a warm idealistic mother who gave me and my sister a deep sense of equality and justice and diligence.
But in another sense, some of the authors I have read over the years have ‘fathered’ and 'mothered' me, too. Maybe even more deeply than my father and mother who gave me birth and guided me when I was young.
Our modern technology achieves what our human philosophy and literature set its goals on to do in the past. For instance, think of how many scientists got their start because of love of and inspiration from science fiction and speculative literature.
And think of famous humanitarians and social justice advocates who were first inspired by idealistic heroes in stories as kids.
For good or for ill, for joy and zest or sadness and despair...like Albert Einstein insisted, imagination is the creator of our future, not mere facts. Those are only the building blocks. Our creativity and goals are the schematics.
Where would we be without Verne, Wells, Kant, Descartes, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Voltaire, Jefferson, Paine, Shakespeare, Eliot, Huxley, Orwell, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hugo, Basho, Blake, Whitman, Owen, Twain, Melville, Conrad, Kafka, Bradbury, Gandhi, Hegel, Marx, Hume, James, Locke, Darwin, Sagan, Gould, King, Farmer, etc.?
Where would I be without Thoreau, Bonhoeffer, Hawthorne, C. Bronte, F. O'Connor, Lewis, Nouwen, Merton, Tillich, Wiesel, Camus, Poe, Vonnegut, Thich Nhat Hanh,
even Millay, Kerouac, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dennett, and Simmons?
What authors have 'fathered' and 'mothered' you in your life?
*Idea for story from educator Jim Burke
To be continued--
--
And while you are contemplating on and reflecting about your 'fathers' of the mind, consider reaching out to so many millions of orphans who need help and guidance and hope.
Contact World Vision or Oxfam, or another outreach organization that meets the needs of the young.
Don't listen to the negative siren song of skeptics who claim that all ethics are relative and subjective.
"Right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and injustice." Oxfam
Sponsor a child with World Vision: http://www.worldvision.org/
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
When he reached young adulthood, the fatherless son searched and searched for years looking for any trace of his absentee father.
Finally, years later after diligent effort, a detective he had hired located the man who was now living in Portland, Oregon, married to another woman with 3 offspring who he was ignoring, too.
The fatherless son flew United, "the Friendly Skies," to Portland, anxious to meet his unknown father, but when he got to downtown, near the docks, he felt ambivalent and sat down on a quay, wondering whether he really wanted to meet.
Huge container ships and tankers moved through the rough dark waters of the Columbia River. In a way, he felt like Ismael.
Following directions that the investigator had given him, the orphan took a taxi to the posh address at shortly after sunrise, and walked up and down a wide winding sidewalk out in front of the ultra-mansion, until its owner, his father, came out the front door, and hailed the waiting taxi, got in and drove away.
The man's build was all wrong, stocky and compact; and he had walked with a lunge, as if about to attack some invisible enemy. His face was sharp with a large nose. Not at all like my skinny frame but prominent cheeks; must have gotten my body from my mother's side.
Suddenly, it hit him deeply that this stranger was of no interest to him, that he didn't know this rich man from Adam. At that he laughed, since by profession he, himself, was an evolutionary biologist and knew there had never been only one original father of the human race.
I may have gotten my genetic heritage from this stranger, but my real fathers (and my mothers besides my dying one) were the writers I read growing up, the thinkers that guided me when I had no father and had lost my mother.*
--
Well, of course, unlike this orphan, I did have a very dear father, one who used to take me fishing, hunting, and traveling, and guided me as to what was right and helped me later with major decisions. A man who stood by me, a real friend. And a warm idealistic mother who gave me and my sister a deep sense of equality and justice and diligence.
But in another sense, some of the authors I have read over the years have ‘fathered’ and 'mothered' me, too. Maybe even more deeply than my father and mother who gave me birth and guided me when I was young.
Our modern technology achieves what our human philosophy and literature set its goals on to do in the past. For instance, think of how many scientists got their start because of love of and inspiration from science fiction and speculative literature.
And think of famous humanitarians and social justice advocates who were first inspired by idealistic heroes in stories as kids.
For good or for ill, for joy and zest or sadness and despair...like Albert Einstein insisted, imagination is the creator of our future, not mere facts. Those are only the building blocks. Our creativity and goals are the schematics.
Where would we be without Verne, Wells, Kant, Descartes, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Voltaire, Jefferson, Paine, Shakespeare, Eliot, Huxley, Orwell, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hugo, Basho, Blake, Whitman, Owen, Twain, Melville, Conrad, Kafka, Bradbury, Gandhi, Hegel, Marx, Hume, James, Locke, Darwin, Sagan, Gould, King, Farmer, etc.?
Where would I be without Thoreau, Bonhoeffer, Hawthorne, C. Bronte, F. O'Connor, Lewis, Nouwen, Merton, Tillich, Wiesel, Camus, Poe, Vonnegut, Thich Nhat Hanh,
even Millay, Kerouac, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dennett, and Simmons?
What authors have 'fathered' and 'mothered' you in your life?
*Idea for story from educator Jim Burke
To be continued--
--
And while you are contemplating on and reflecting about your 'fathers' of the mind, consider reaching out to so many millions of orphans who need help and guidance and hope.
Contact World Vision or Oxfam, or another outreach organization that meets the needs of the young.
Don't listen to the negative siren song of skeptics who claim that all ethics are relative and subjective.
"Right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and injustice." Oxfam
Sponsor a child with World Vision: http://www.worldvision.org/
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Monday, September 21, 2015
Part #2: Thoughts on Ernest Hemingway and King David
On Visiting Hemingway’s Mansion
Next to the mansion Pauline’s money bought
Where Hemingway wrote
Timeless stories
Of skill
And luck
And Nothing…
Next to this blocked hard beauty
Of coral rock,
Survivor of hurricanes
Their dissolute lives
Of lust and liquor
And divorce…
Next to the survivors, the 54 cats
Including the 6-toed ones
And a 150-year-old Banyan tree…
Stand the Key West lighthouse and the mortuary.
Light and death…
Suicide at 61
Hemingway spoke of writing one true sentence.
Why not live one true life?
by Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in The Rogue Review
Also in Leaf Garden and Psalms, Yawps, and Howls
--
Partially Found Poem Lost*
*Created from an old review by Anthony Burgess
of Ernest Hemingway and His World
by Jack Beatty in The New Republic October 7, 1978
The Bull-thrower Hemingway touches up
His life to match his legend’s ‘fancifications,’
Combining the charming with family tragic
Compulsive aficionado of the braggart
Early photo shot of an ample youth
Clutching a dead bird in one hand
And holding a large thick phallus
Of a gun with the other; later
He basked and boasted of past
Wives and bulls figured in
Most of the pictures filled
With nerves and muscles
Instead of head and heart
Growing gloom, failing
To be his own tall myth
Pressure without grace
Too godlike to cope
A reason to despair
Caught in a terrible
Repetition from
Key West to
Self-death
Bad end
Lie
Gathered into poetic form by
Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in The Houston Literary Review,
also in Psalms, Yawps, and Howls
--
"And when [God] had removed [Saul], he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’
Acts 13:22
After His Own Bloody Heart?
Like David when he killed for that Philistine king,
That former shepherd boy with his sling and stone,
Who had slaughtered and beheaded Goliath,
Now turned slaying brigand for Goliath’s nation;
So with a raider’s heart and savage sword,
God’s man assassinates 200 men fore- (their hidden) skin
Only so to wed into Saul’s royal line, loveless using,
Then abandoning his saving wife Michel for other women,
What a slew!
And this Godly marauder sallies forth from
Zitlag stringing a brazen deception,
Not a psalmed lyre; yes, a liar,
‘preying’ on others to execute,
Massacring every man, woman, and infant--
Hear the death ‘rattle’?
Palming other’s possessions, not psalming
Stripping the bleeding dead for precious loot,
Plundering towns, dark gashes of bandit smoke,
Gehenna
Oh the Hebrew off-angled gulag…
“Precious not is the over flow”
No truth shedding and bloody
Hellish, David living as Goliath—
Sheol
Not
Selah
*27 “David arose and went, along with his men, and killed two hundred of the Philistines. And David brought their foreskins, which were given in full number to the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law. And Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife. 28 …Yahweh was with David, and that Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him.
1 Samuel 18: 26-28
*Hymn ”Nothing But the Blood of Jesus”
* “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Hebrews 9:22 ESV
By Daniel Wilcox
--
But thank Goodness, there is good news to counter all of the horror, tragedy, sorrow, cruelty, and absurdity...
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Next to the mansion Pauline’s money bought
Where Hemingway wrote
Timeless stories
Of skill
And luck
And Nothing…
Next to this blocked hard beauty
Of coral rock,
Survivor of hurricanes
Their dissolute lives
Of lust and liquor
And divorce…
Next to the survivors, the 54 cats
Including the 6-toed ones
And a 150-year-old Banyan tree…
Stand the Key West lighthouse and the mortuary.
Light and death…
Suicide at 61
Hemingway spoke of writing one true sentence.
Why not live one true life?
by Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in The Rogue Review
Also in Leaf Garden and Psalms, Yawps, and Howls
Partially Found Poem Lost*
*Created from an old review by Anthony Burgess
of Ernest Hemingway and His World
by Jack Beatty in The New Republic October 7, 1978
The Bull-thrower Hemingway touches up
His life to match his legend’s ‘fancifications,’
Combining the charming with family tragic
Compulsive aficionado of the braggart
Early photo shot of an ample youth
Clutching a dead bird in one hand
And holding a large thick phallus
Of a gun with the other; later
He basked and boasted of past
Wives and bulls figured in
Most of the pictures filled
With nerves and muscles
Instead of head and heart
Growing gloom, failing
To be his own tall myth
Pressure without grace
Too godlike to cope
A reason to despair
Caught in a terrible
Repetition from
Key West to
Self-death
Bad end
Lie
Gathered into poetic form by
Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in The Houston Literary Review,
also in Psalms, Yawps, and Howls
--
"And when [God] had removed [Saul], he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’
Acts 13:22
After His Own Bloody Heart?
Like David when he killed for that Philistine king,
That former shepherd boy with his sling and stone,
Who had slaughtered and beheaded Goliath,
Now turned slaying brigand for Goliath’s nation;
So with a raider’s heart and savage sword,
God’s man assassinates 200 men fore- (their hidden) skin
Only so to wed into Saul’s royal line, loveless using,
Then abandoning his saving wife Michel for other women,
What a slew!
And this Godly marauder sallies forth from
Zitlag stringing a brazen deception,
Not a psalmed lyre; yes, a liar,
‘preying’ on others to execute,
Massacring every man, woman, and infant--
Hear the death ‘rattle’?
Palming other’s possessions, not psalming
Stripping the bleeding dead for precious loot,
Plundering towns, dark gashes of bandit smoke,
Gehenna
Oh the Hebrew off-angled gulag…
“Precious not is the over flow”
No truth shedding and bloody
Hellish, David living as Goliath—
Sheol
Not
Selah
*27 “David arose and went, along with his men, and killed two hundred of the Philistines. And David brought their foreskins, which were given in full number to the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law. And Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife. 28 …Yahweh was with David, and that Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him.
1 Samuel 18: 26-28
*Hymn ”Nothing But the Blood of Jesus”
* “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Hebrews 9:22 ESV
By Daniel Wilcox
--
But thank Goodness, there is good news to counter all of the horror, tragedy, sorrow, cruelty, and absurdity...
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Friday, July 1, 2011
The Meaning of Human Sexuality
Surely, I must be joking? Thinking I can take on the herculean (adam-evesques) task of explaining the meaning of human sexuality? That would be like climbing Niagara Falls or trying to explain the theological significance of Viagra;-).
The meaning of human sexuality is so deep and so transcendent and so complicated and so controversial, it would first be better to tangle with the behemoth or leviathan mentioned in the Book of Job. But since none of us can get away from the topic (and I seldom have ever wanted to except when revoltingly sick).
Here goes—
A little introductory humor:
How can you tell if a man is thinking about sexuality? Is he breathing? LOL
A few quotes to set the tone before the texted tome, and to show the inexplicable contrariness and contradictory outlook of various human beings toward this incessantly fascinating topic:
And God created the human in his image,
in the image of God…male and female…
And God blessed them, and God said to them,
Be fruitful and multiply
…and, look, it was very good.
Genesis 1:27-31
"The [marriage] vows should be written like a dog's license that has to be renewed every year…I think vows should be changed because they've been in existence for 600 years when people used to live until they were only 35. So they only had to be with each other for 12 years, then they would die anyway. But now it's a big commitment because you're going to be with someone for 50 years. It's impossible…It's such a rarity for people to stay together that 68% of marriages fail. I don't want to urinate on the party, but one must consider that before getting married.
Rock Musician Rod Stewart
“Sex is like pissing. People take it much too seriously.
Painter Diego Rivera
“If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.”
Painter Diego Rivera
“Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”
Yeshua, the Messiah (Anointed One)
“Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions."
Aldous Huxley
"I think I could fall madly in bed with you."
Anonymous
“Vanity, revenge, loneliness, boredom, all apply: lust is one of the least of the reasons for promiscuity."
Mignon McLaughlin
“To me heaven would be…two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.”
Ernest Hemingway
“The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.”
Philip James Bailey
"Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.
John Ciardi
"I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love."
Henry Ward Beecher
Roman and Grace are a married Spokane Indian couple. He is standing close to her with his basketball between them, as if the ball represents the expectant infant they will soon create…
“Michael Jordan is coming back again,” he said.
“You can’t fool me,” said Grace. “I heard it. That was just a replay.”
“Yeah, but I wish he was coming back again. He should always come back.”
“Don’t let it give you any crazy ideas.”
Roman pulled the basketball away and leaned even closer to Grace. He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love—it just happens!—but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left—the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.
In their marriage bed, Roman chose Grace once more and brushed his lips against her ear.
From “Saint Junior” by Sherman Alexie
To be continued in Part 2: Since sex only has three letters, how did it become a four-letter word (the "plow" word and the "love" word)?
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
The meaning of human sexuality is so deep and so transcendent and so complicated and so controversial, it would first be better to tangle with the behemoth or leviathan mentioned in the Book of Job. But since none of us can get away from the topic (and I seldom have ever wanted to except when revoltingly sick).
Here goes—
A little introductory humor:
How can you tell if a man is thinking about sexuality? Is he breathing? LOL
A few quotes to set the tone before the texted tome, and to show the inexplicable contrariness and contradictory outlook of various human beings toward this incessantly fascinating topic:
And God created the human in his image,
in the image of God…male and female…
And God blessed them, and God said to them,
Be fruitful and multiply
…and, look, it was very good.
Genesis 1:27-31
"The [marriage] vows should be written like a dog's license that has to be renewed every year…I think vows should be changed because they've been in existence for 600 years when people used to live until they were only 35. So they only had to be with each other for 12 years, then they would die anyway. But now it's a big commitment because you're going to be with someone for 50 years. It's impossible…It's such a rarity for people to stay together that 68% of marriages fail. I don't want to urinate on the party, but one must consider that before getting married.
Rock Musician Rod Stewart
“Sex is like pissing. People take it much too seriously.
Painter Diego Rivera
“If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.”
Painter Diego Rivera
“Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”
Yeshua, the Messiah (Anointed One)
“Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions."
Aldous Huxley
"I think I could fall madly in bed with you."
Anonymous
“Vanity, revenge, loneliness, boredom, all apply: lust is one of the least of the reasons for promiscuity."
Mignon McLaughlin
“To me heaven would be…two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.”
Ernest Hemingway
“The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.”
Philip James Bailey
"Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.
John Ciardi
"I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love."
Henry Ward Beecher
Roman and Grace are a married Spokane Indian couple. He is standing close to her with his basketball between them, as if the ball represents the expectant infant they will soon create…
“Michael Jordan is coming back again,” he said.
“You can’t fool me,” said Grace. “I heard it. That was just a replay.”
“Yeah, but I wish he was coming back again. He should always come back.”
“Don’t let it give you any crazy ideas.”
Roman pulled the basketball away and leaned even closer to Grace. He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love—it just happens!—but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left—the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.
In their marriage bed, Roman chose Grace once more and brushed his lips against her ear.
From “Saint Junior” by Sherman Alexie
To be continued in Part 2: Since sex only has three letters, how did it become a four-letter word (the "plow" word and the "love" word)?
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
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