Listening Against the Stone brings together selections spanning the breadth of the work of Brenda Miller, including six essays that have won the Pushcart Prize.
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Preface
Blessings
Incantations
Basha Leah
Next Year in Jerusalem
A Different Person
I Need a Miracle
Blessing of the Animals
A Thousand Buddhas
A Dharma Name
Music of the Spheres
How to Meditate
A Thousand Buddhas
Twelve Ways of Looking at Patience
Infant Ward
Raging Waters
Dirty Windows
The Burden of Bearing Fruit
At the Edge of the World
Hungers
Our Daily Toast
Enticement
The 23rd Adagio
Secret Machine
Opalescent
The Dog at the Edge of the World
Bodyguard
I’ve always believed in signs, and will do almost anything to predict the future. Often the first to pry open my fortune amid the remains of a Chinese dinner, I inhale the smell of the cookie itself as prophecy: that honeyed shellac, the faintest bitter whiff of lemon. I like best those moments just before my future will be revealed, the cookie still whole in my hands, my fate untouched within its folds. When the time comes, I read the fortune aloud with scorn, I laugh with my dinner companions, I add the words “in bed” to every line because that’s what’s done these days. But secretly I believe anything the fortunes say; I stash these ribbons away in my purse where I’ll come across them weeks, months, years later and won’t be able to remember if what they said came true.
This predilection for the mystic has been with me ever since I was a child. The best present I ever received as a girl was the Magic 8-ball: every day I asked it a question, my hands sweaty on the black orb, then I turned it over so the answer floated up with sharp clarity from the murk: It depends, No, All signs point to yes. I found such limited and simple answers liberating rather than confining; I suppose I felt comforted by the possibilities whittled down to a certain few, the future determined in the simplest words possible. Even if the answer disappointed I resisted asking the question again, wary of contradiction. Once answered, forever answered: that’s what I believed.
Preface
Blessings
Incantations
Basha Leah
Next Year in Jerusalem
A Different Person
I Need a Miracle
Blessing of the Animals
A Thousand Buddhas
A Dharma Name
Music of the Spheres
How to Meditate
A Thousand Buddhas
Twelve Ways of Looking at Patience
Infant Ward
Raging Waters
Dirty Windows
The Burden of Bearing Fruit
At the Edge of the World
Hungers
Our Daily Toast
Enticement
The 23rd Adagio
Secret Machine
Opalescent
The Dog at the Edge of the World
Bodyguard
I’ve always believed in signs, and will do almost anything to predict the future. Often the first to pry open my fortune amid the remains of a Chinese dinner, I inhale the smell of the cookie itself as prophecy: that honeyed shellac, the faintest bitter whiff of lemon. I like best those moments just before my future will be revealed, the cookie still whole in my hands, my fate untouched within its folds. When the time comes, I read the fortune aloud with scorn, I laugh with my dinner companions, I add the words “in bed” to every line because that’s what’s done these days. But secretly I believe anything the fortunes say; I stash these ribbons away in my purse where I’ll come across them weeks, months, years later and won’t be able to remember if what they said came true.
This predilection for the mystic has been with me ever since I was a child. The best present I ever received as a girl was the Magic 8-ball: every day I asked it a question, my hands sweaty on the black orb, then I turned it over so the answer floated up with sharp clarity from the murk: It depends, No, All signs point to yes. I found such limited and simple answers liberating rather than confining; I suppose I felt comforted by the possibilities whittled down to a certain few, the future determined in the simplest words possible. Even if the answer disappointed I resisted asking the question again, wary of contradiction. Once answered, forever answered: that’s what I believed.
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