These days, politics brings out the worst in Americans, grows them fangs and claws, makes their throats heavy with growls, their faces dark with scowls and like vampires versus werewolves they attack each other with fury.

I’m a passive character tossed on the waves of differing points of view and crisscrossing flashbacks, until I feel that the structure of my life was written by a Surrealist trying to channel Rabelais, with the cosmic carnival of life passing me by; and me, off-center and off-kilter, attempting to capture details like motes from the air but succeeding only in piecing together perfectly written circumlocutions.

I have always had this thing for fallen angels. Firstly, right off the bat: I admire them for when they still haven’t fallen, when their wings are still unfurled and erect and beautifully covered with crystalline courage, and when their brow is still knit with the studious exertion necessary to…

Atheism was, to me, the only stance possible after exponentially diminishing returns. Viewing that mighty worldwide array of spiritual options, wandering from one denomination to the other, I was overwhelmed with the multitudinousness of them.

The mother: “Honey, what’s that smell coming from the basement?”
The father: “Well, I don’t know, hon, let me take a whiff. Why, that’s nitric acid from drain cleaner, sulphuric acid from rust remover, with a soupçon of acetone from nail polish remover.