The Doors released their first single in 1967: “Break on Through (to the Other Side),” a tribute of sorts to Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Huxley had been trying to break on through to the other side for years. He put together a splendid book in the 1940s called…

My daughter runs. She runs in the morning, she runs at night. Runs, runs, runs. People around town see her and go, “Look at that girl! She’s a runner.” But I know she’s more than that. My daughter breathes. She breathes in the morning, she breathes at night. Breathes, breathes…

The Lamp continues to impress. Issue 11 arrived last week. I think it might be the best yet. It’s eclectic yet Catholic. Probably more eclectic (“A Catholic journal of literature, science, the fine arts, etc.”), so much so, that I have a hard time believing anyone, Catholic or Druid, wouldn’t…

A poem — (Caution: I’m neither a poet nor even a wanna poet, but I don’t think this is awful . . . but maybe it is . . . you decide) The day grows long, and I start to desire The cold bitter taste and the amber hue, Of a cold draft…

T.S. Eliot T.S. Eliot was one of those writers who dominated his age. Russell Kirk said Eliot was to the early 20th century what Samuel Johnson was to the 18th century . . . or what Homer was to his age. …

Kerouac rejected The Great Rejection — He sat on his mother’s couch, smoking marijuana and watching the McCarthy hearings, cheering Tail Gunner Joe. He was 32 and it was 1954. In his 20s and the 1940s, he said he’d like to join his Russian comrades and fight against Fascism. He coined the term “Beat Generation” which…

Ah, the life bushwhack. When I wore a younger man’s clothes, I thought the bushwhacks would go away. …

A Micro-Review/Essay — “Hawthorne’s chief accomplishment: impressing the idea of sin upon a nation which would like to forget it.” My book still has that smell that all the books from that little bookstore in Niles, Michigan, had. I bought it for $10, back in 1989, when I was a law student. I…

“I liked small talk, so I was a wretched sinner.” That, anyway, is how I interpreted an early chunk of St. Theresa Avila’s Autobiography. I’ve long had an aversion to small talk, unless I’m drinking. Older people were constantly interrupting me with small talk. I remember waiting for my wheels to get rotated, the dialogues of Plato in my hand…