Just another writer
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimge: Nativity of the Lord (a bit late)
Driving east on 37th Street, I saw the bell tower of Nativity of Our Lord Parish looming over the houses and 2 and 3-flats that populate Bridgeport east of new Comiskey,¹ a strong reminder of the days when a home parish was a key marker of self-identity in Chicago. But only once I was inside
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: Saint John Cantius
There are certain parishes in the archdiocese where knowing that’s where someone goes to Mass regularly tells you a whole lot about them. Saint Sabina, Old Saint Pat’s and Saint John Cantius are three which spring immediately to mind. The last one on this list is the hyper-traditionalist parish. When I attended Mass at Holy
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: St John of the Cross (one day late)
St John of the Cross parish has a Sunday evening Mass, a practice which has a sentimental attachment for me. Arriving at the church in the darkness of December, the first thing I noticed was a collection of handicapped spaces that rivals the size of some parishes’ entire parking lots. The liturgy itself was solidly
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Catholic Nerd Pilgrimage: Shrine of Our Lady of Guadupe (three days late)
I’ve been trying to give priority to shrines when they’re an option, so for Our Lady of Guadalupe, I drove up to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe which claimed on its website that it would be holding a 7p Mass. As near as I could discover on arrival, there was no Mass taking
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New poem: Corpse in the mirror
Whenever I write an 8-line poem, I find myself wondering if it can be turned into a pantoum, a poetic form which takes 8-lines of poetry and twists them into something else. As a sort of deterministic randomizer, this sort of thing felt like a good fit for the Dada issue of Exacting Clam and the
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Writerly resolutions: November status
So I attempted to be a bit more focused in these last two months of the year, with minimal success: Read through We, the Rescued at least once and get my editorial notes in place: I’ve read 17 out of 29 chapters. I was hoping to have read the whole thing by now, but I think
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A visit with my younger self: 22 May 1989
It’s kind of interesting to me how memory works: with no context, the bit about the Danaïds was sufficient for me to remember that I wrote this in a motel room in St Louis on the first trip I took to teach LaTeX classes. This was at a defense contractor in St Louis which dealt
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Beautiful sentences: Roberto Bolaño
Veo el perfil de Neruda y el mío, pero en realidad me engaño, es sólo un árbol, veo un árbol, la silueta múltiple y monstruosa de la hojarasca, como un mar que se seca, un dibujo que sugiere dos perfiles y que en realidad es una tumba al aire libre partida por la espada de
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Eternity
A week ago I saw a screening of the new movie, Eternity, which was a decent enough romantic comedy set in the afterlife.¹ I’m not going to write a review of the film itself, but instead there were two aspects of the afterlife as presented in the film that really captured my attention: First, the idea