Afternoon Desperation

Eck sat at his desk. He noted just then how a beam of sun had passed, shading his blue typewriter a darker blue. The chatter of his son weaved child’s talk into his reverie about light and shadow, dust columns and wrinkled paper. He lifted his hand and let it travel through the slanted division of morning and afternoon.

“Da!” The red-faced child crawled around the corner.

“I’m sorry, Honey.” Eck’s wife swept the baby off the floor, whispering something about Daddy’s work.

Until the stars wheeled into view, he toyed with this phrase: The passage of time is loss.

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Silliness Solidifies Relationships

On February 8th, I posted an introduction of sorts called "Toward a Manifesto of Silliness." Every week since then I've written about silliness, mostly as a way to meditate on and answer the question: What makes silliness important? My family and I talked it over, and here are our answers: "Silliness is a Sign of Joy." "Silliness is Important Because We are Silly." "Silliness is Just Fun." "Silliness Helps Bring Balance." Thinking on and writing about those answers helped this last silly answer grow -- I had an idea at first, but those initial answers shaped how I thought/think about silliness. It was a suspicion that began the day my youngest son and I played our game of nothing. Remember? All this began with nothing. Try to imagine: First, we sat side by side, the whole room bright from the sun. Soon, he draped his arms around my neck, and because of the faces we'd been making, laughter took over. His brothers were close by, ...

To the Mountains: Fall on Us

Blankenship didn't hear the priest's opening words. He heard people sit down behind him, and he noted that the sound of water hitting the makeshift tent mingled with their whispers and their folding, shivering umbrellas. A little girl carried a yellow one, and he saw the light of it amidst the intermingled shadows of gray clouds and those cast by ancient oaks as she walked toward the grave. The age-worn branches labored in the wind; endlessly they creaked and rubbed into life a music, a siren's song, the lyrics a sighing lament that told of what lay beneath the turf. Blankenship wondered what the roots knew and how much they would tell if he listened, if anyone listened. He realized he missed the reading when the prayer began. The priest spoke words into the air, but Blankenship pictured in his mind's eye his boy's room the night he learned of the sickness. A window had been left open and the wind swept in, and wave upon wave of dust was tossed over the floor. H...

Silliness Is Important Because We Are Silly

Where have we been so far? In my introductory post, Toward a Manifesto of Silliness , I wrote that I asked my family: "What makes silliness important?" The first answer: Silliness Is a Sign of Joy . Today, we're meditating on our second answer: Silliness is important because we are silly. As I explained about the first answer, this one also found me at a loss. It was a probing kind of answer, and, as we'll see in later posts, it's where I'm headed with all this nonsense. But hang with me here for now. Isn't the circular nature of this answer fitting? Silliness is important because we are silly; we are silly because it's important. As an argument, this circular kind rests at the peak of hilarity -- it's silly. And yet, the very nature of what we're discussing here requires a deep presupposition that can't be explained anyway. So we're fine with circular if you are. "Look around you," my son seemed to say. "Aren't WE s...

Ian M. Anderson

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