Yes. Please. A little more. A speck more in the line of practical advice. “Very well. The trick is this: keep your eye on the ball. Even when you can’t see the ball.” You’re kidding, thought Ellen Cherry Charles.

Come on, now. What’s the punch line? There’s got to be something else. Until, finally, a voice inside her said: “We’re making it up.” Who? What? “Us. All of us. It. All of it. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality.” We’re making it up?

“The dance itself predates Herod and that particular Salome, his stepdaughter. In fact, it is very ancient and thoroughly pagan. It is connected to the myth of the cyclic death of the sun god. His moon goddess travels to the underworld to rescue him, but to get him back she has to drop one of her seven articles of clothing at each of its seven

Religion was an attempt to pin down the Divine. The Divine was eternally in flux, forever moving, shifting shape.

When Bud grew accustomed to the dim light, he recognized the boyish good looks of the vice president of the United States. “Care for a brewski, Reverend Winkler?”

Yet, she was entirely correct to propose that Buddy’s disregard for nature, art, and the human experience was tied to his concept of time, especially in regard to an ultimate five o’clock whistle followed by an afterlife.

Salome turned slowly to the mural, where a more lunar sensibility was represented: a loose poetic text of seasons and renewal. Imperceptible to the audience, she emitted a soft, low howl. She rattled her tambourine. Then, she danced.

This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper. This is the room where the boys slept inside their blowguns to avoid being bitten by the bats, for whom the girls sewed tiny velvet suits.

Whenever a state or an individual cited “insufficient funds” as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth.