Still Life With Woodpecker

by Tom Robbins

Behavioral traits such as curiosity about the world, flexibility of response, and playfulness are common to practically all young mammals but are usually rapidly lost with the onset of maturity in all but humans. Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness” was one slogan of maturity to which Leigh-Cheri could faithfully subscribe—not stopping to consider that if by the last quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.