The English Major

by Jim Harrison

Trying to figure out the place of marriage’s arduous dreariness became inscrutable parked there on the roadside.

“When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen had gleaned my teeming brain…” That was throwing the raw meat on the floor in a lovely way.

I had abandoned my purest impulses for a lifetime of toil and now they were arising again.

My dissipating thoughts of life in terms of victory or defeat came along willy nilly from a culture that pretended that life was far more solid than it actually was. The edges were actually blurred and moved along with the infinitely variable shape of a river.

a stiff single drink on the porch on a summer evening can be like going to the church of your “self.”