Dickens' Favorite Kid

He wrote 15 novels, and the story goes, his favorite of these well-regarded children was David Copperfield, the 877 pages of which I recently finished, and found myself moved to believe it one of my favorites as well.  Now, to be fair, it is to date my only cover-to-cover Dickens experience, so calling it my favorite Dickens is accurate by any standard.  I mean then it's become one of my all-time favorites, and one to which I may return.  It was touching, compelling, poetic, and everything else a novel should be.  What's more, you'll find in the opening chapters maybe the most poignant description of childhood in not only the Victorian canon, but in all of literature.  It isn't surprising to find

Indian Summer Blues

I've been acquainting myself with a collection of solo piano tunes called Indian Summer by jazz legend Dave Brubeck.  Of course, I made it through another working summer seeking enrichment and renewal in many ways.  But in the end, the seemingly endless parade of concerns concurrent with my job take their toll, and I resolved to spend the last two weeks of summer vacation keeping an intentional distance from work, a kind of Indian summer in itself.  And Brubeck helped. 

Summer school's a pretty relaxed and straightforward enough gig, though not entirely conducive to a sense of real "staycation," especially in light of all the fun and trip-taking so many close family and friends seemed to have enjoyed.  I had plenty of fun myself, for sure: saw my lady quite a bit, swam and barbecued, read and wrote, and otherwise tried taking it easy as often as I could afford to.  But here's hoping this was my last summer spent teaching.  Altogether it really wasn't so bad; the kids were great, and all went fairly smooth-like, everything considered.  At the same time, I'm naturally anxious to have a bit more balance,

A Little Revolution

It's been more than a year that I've neglected Serenity Now, and with good reason; the majority of my artistic life has been spent making progress on the most ambitious creative project of my life so far, a novel called Stuart Delaney.  Now that I've managed to make it a quarter of the way through that literary behemoth, I felt like there was a little room to breathe and take a day or two to share some of the thoughts that have drifted through my mind since the recent Criterion blu-ray release of the 1971 dark comedy and downright epically unassuming cinematic treasure Harold and Maude, which is more than a little apropos since many of its themes run through my own opus, not the least of which include a wayward vocational vector, rejection of social mores, and youthful disillusionment.

On Losing Virtue, Part 2

A while back, I wrote an article about the modern cultural fluency that governs sexuality. I argued specifically that our secular humanistic culture exalts sexual gratification out of a conspicuous pandemic of impatient self-indulgence. With this seemingly cavalier attitude toward sexuality, we attempt to “cheat” and acquire a level of intimacy we haven’t truly earned. In other words, we try to get it cheap, and like children having just succeeded in some grand misbehavior, we revel in the freedom from any accountability inevitably tied to the sex act. In biblical Christian doctrine, however, God is glorified by preserving sexual intimacy for the marriage bed, where the solemn promise of fidelity has already been secured, and the requisite emotional attachment, devotion, and all the responsibilities implicit in sexual congress (including the possibility of pregnancy and all the rest of it) are guaranteed, having already been pledged ceremonially through the blessing and sacrament of marriage. Many try to downplay the significance of such ceremony, as if their hormonal impulses alone were blessing enough. We try to get sex cheap, without having to earn it by winning someone’s love and respect and promising lifelong fidelity before God. As I stated in that