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And the Ass Saw the Angel
By Nick Cave
There below! O little valley!
Two shattered knees of land rise and open to make a crease
between. Down the bitten inner-flank we go, where trees laden with
thick vines grow upon the trembling slopes. Some hang out into the
valley at dangerous angles, their worried roots rising from the
hillside soil as they suffer the creeping burden that trusses and
binds and weighs like the world across their limbs. This knitted
creeper, these trees, all strung to one and chained to the ground by
vine.
Travelling the length of the valley, south to north, as the crow
flies, we follow its main road as it weaves its way along the flat of
the valley's belly. From up here it could be a ribbon, as we pass
over the first of many hundreds of acres of smouldering cane.
Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream
By H.G. Bissinger
In the beginning, on a dog-day Monday in the middle of August when
the West Texas heat congealed in the sky, there were only the
stirrings of dreams. It was the very first official day of practice
and it marked the start of a new team, a new year, a new season, with
a new rallying cry scribbled madly in the backs of yearbooks and on
the rear windows of cars: GOIN' TO STATE IN EIGHTY- EIGHT!
It was a little after six in the morning when the coaches started
trickling into the Permian High School field house. The streets of
Odessa were empty, with no signs of life except the perpetual glare
of the convenience store lights on one corner after another. The K
mart was closed, of course, and so was the Wal-Mart. But inside the
field house, a squat structure behind the main school building, there
was only the delicious anticipation of starting anew. On each of the
coaches' desks lay caps with bills that were still stiff and sweat
bands that didn't contain the hot stain of sweat, with the word
PERMIAN emblazoned across the front in pearly thread. From one of the
coaches came the shrill blow of the whistle, followed by the gleeful
cry of ''Let's go, men!''
East is East
By T. Coraghessan Boyle
He was swimming, rotating from front to back, thrashing his arms and legs and puffing out his cheeks, and it seemed as if he'd been swimming forever. He did the crawl, the breaststroke, the Yokohama kick. Tiring, he clung to the cork life ring like some shapeless creature of the depths, a pale certificate of flesh. Sometime during the fifth hour, he began to think of soup. Miso-shiru, rice chowder, the thin sea-stinking broth his grandmother would make of fish heads and eel. And then he thought of beer — bottles like amber jewels in a bed of ice — and finally he thought of water, only water.
No Turning Back: Two Nuns Battle with the Vatican Over Women's Right to Choose
By Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey, with Jane O'Reilly
As soon as we walked into the room, we started rearranging the chairs.
A convent parlor has an iconography all its own. No matter what
country it is in, no matter the age of the building which surrounds
it, a convent parlor always seems to begin with polished floors and
to end in the dim shadows of a lofty ceiling. The pictures on the
walls have gilt frames, and they portray traditional inspirations:
virgins, ascensions, and luminous bleeding hearts. The furniture,
since it has usually been donated by a prosperous Catholic family
that has moved on to newer styles, appears slightly orphaned, uneasy
in its juxtapositions. The rugs, of a Persian sort, and the tables,
of a French sort, look quite presentable but they are always slightly
wrong. The tables are too high for resting a teacup, too low for
holding books and papers, but perfect for nicking a visitor's kneecap
or catching the edge of the carpet. The wooden chairs are either
carved and vaguely apostolic or folding and sharp. The stuffed
furniture is stiff and fights back. The smell of a parlor is of wax,
damask, piety, and cabbage.
