Writing Is The Only Way I Have

To Describe Our Growing Up In The Lowcountry Of South Carolina, I Would Have To Take You To The Marsh On A Spring Day, Flush The Great Blue Heron From Its Silent Occupation, Scatter Marsh Hens As We Sink To Our Knees In Mud, Open An Oyster With A Pocketknife And Feed It To You From The Shell And Say, 'there. That Taste. That's The Taste Of My Childhood.'

I Wanted To Become The Seeker, The Aroused And Passionate Explorer, And It Was Better To Go At It Knowing Nothing At All, Always Choosing The Unmarked Bottle, Always Choosing Your Own Unproven Method, Armed With Nothing But Faith And A Belief In Astonishment.

I Prayed Hard And Only Gradually Became Aware That This Fierce Praying Was A Way Of Finding Prologue And Entrance Into My Own Writing. This Came As Both Astonishment And Relief. When I Thought God Had Abandoned Me, I Discovered That He Had Simply Given Me A Different Voice To Praise The Inexhaustible Beauty Of The Made World.

Will His Work Survive? Alas, I Worry That It Will Not. As An American Liberal With Impeccable Credentials, I Would Like To Say That Political Correctness Is Going To Kill American Liberalism If It Is Not Fought To The Death By People Like Me For The Dangers It Represents To Free Speech, To The Exchange Of Ideas, To Openheartedness, Or To The Spirit Of Art Itself. Political Correctness Has A Stranglehold On Academia, On Feminism, And On The Media. It Is A Form Of Both Madness And Maggotry, And Has Already Silenced The Voices Of Writers Like James Dicky Across The Land.

Baseball Fans Love Numbers. They Love To Swirl Them Around Their Mouths Like Bordeaux Wine.