In the Peacock Room

It rankled me to have to engage in enforced corporate Grace, to see people reading nothing but Bibles,  Our Daily Bread (an evangelical devotional), and 'recovery' material, and to live in a place where the default response of one of the matrons to a simple "How ya' doin'?" was "Blessed. How are you?" (delivered with a kind of sneer that you aren't so lucky). Being as I am, a three-way split between observant Anglican, devout humanist, and quirky mystic, having a one-way ticket into Fundie territory was not too pleasant. One  morning I talked about this to one of the other inmates while waiting for the bus. She seemed more or less sympathetic, and managed to make me feel a little less bitter. I took a deep breath, and let it out. I realized where I was. I was in a Wal-Mart frame of mind. What makes it Wal-Mart  is the fact that Wal-Mart is...well, palatable. It shares with Oprah Winfrey  the gift of making the rift between Blue State and ...

Living where I am, most people are into reading The Bible.  This is OK, I guess, but my humanistic side longed for something else: something as dense and chewy, but different . I got my inspiration while "on vacation" in Martha's Place, another establishment for the homeless, reading two volumes of "The Limits of Art", an anthology of the best of the best (as selected by well-regarded editors) of Western Literature. Having totally charmed another resident by reading her a French love poem (a villanelle)  I went on to read Milton's "Joy" and "Melancholy", and felt incredibly refreshed! Which led me to try the Five Foot Shelf.  Every day, I'd log into Gateway Community College's computers, and download, sometimes in pieces, a reading assignment. Sometimes, I'd take whole volumes out: which caused me a major headache when, under the effects of wine, fatigue and a major cold, I lost one (owners of the Faust volume -- No. 29 --...