Articles

that you commit some part of your mind and heart to an unshakeable belief in the logic of global capital, which means that on a smaller scale you commit some part of your mind and heart to an unshakeable belief in the necessity of placing a two-inch needle into an instrument panel over and over and over again,

In the sanctuary, I repeated a childhood prayer 
I knew some of the words to. I’d skip  
a lecture and want to skip them all— 

“‘Life has become better, comrades. Life has become happier!’” 

this should be no wilderness

to be lost in

While we creatives apprentice ourselves to various crafts, aspiring to art that is “fine,” we might also look for subtle ways to decorate our daily lives with new intentionality. There is a training of the soul in the arts we live with.

Three stories by Diane Williams, master of the form.

To sing of origins is to set a course
to anoint a present where cows and angels
cowherds and shepherd kings
all shine in heaven’s light

That first morning, I remember
clinging to a table’s edge—
both legs jackhammering the white

linoleum floor tiles—praying for
my benzodiazepine to finally,
finally kick in.

The American self contains multitudes: believers, unbelievers, the proudly heterodox, the meekly agnostic, conscientious objectors, freethinkers, vegans, and still other varieties of spiritual aspirant too obscure or holy to name. In this country’s perpetual adolescence, it can feel impossible to bring these ways of being together into a single whole . . .