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from Dancing Over the Rays of Light

12/27/2018

Eventually I located the men’s room. Though it was empty and equipped with an inside lock and showed no evidence of defilement, I found it too public for my taste and chose not to use it to its intended purpose.

Emerging from that room, I strolled farther down the hallway in a spirit of high adventure.

Peering through the narrow window of a door, I espied a large room filled with wheel-free bicycles. Many were being pedaled by senior citizens of European extraction. I chose not to enter that room, for several reasons: (1) I was apprehensive lest my hip suffer further injury; and (2) my earlier self-examination had shown me to be in excellent health, save for my hip.

I continued my cane-aided stroll.

I passed the door of a study. Inside, several elderly Caucasian gentlemen were engaged in a spirited conversation touching on the probable outcome of an impending basketball game between two institutions of higher learning. I did not enter, reminding myself both (1) that I had a study in my own apartment, and (2) that I would presumably detest having my reading disturbed by banter on trivial subjects. In addition, my recent memory of the bookshelves in my library led me to suspect that my tastes did not run in the channel of popular magazines and what appeared to be condensed novels published by Reader’s Digest.

from The First American Pope

12/18/2018

“You have leadership qualities,” Arielle informed Benny. “That’s what the computer says.”

They were at her place, where they were in bed. They were discussing Benny’s future role in the Church of the Wide Open Door while a Jaguar and an Infiniti stood guard in the parking lot.

“Computers can lie,” replied Benny.

“Plus you have the gift.”

“ That’s what my boss says. Bosses can lie too.”

“I think you should stick around for a week. We can enroll you in the Outreach Program.”

“Learning to spread the gospel of Christian Tantrism to the good people of Kansas?” guessed Benny.

“Exactly!” Her voice was gaining in enthusiasm. “Benny Good, missionary!”

Benny thought this over for a split second. “This would require money.”

from Just Another Dead White Male

12/17/2018

“So it’s Mexico this time!”

It was Friday evening, and the Deuces, four pairs of Kansas cosmopolitans, were gathered around two made-in-Taiwan card tables in the Budwieser living room, their feet resting on the Navaho rug Mildred had bought at Mrs. Krzynzky’s garage sale, drinking 99.7% caffeine-free coffee brewed from pure mountain-grown Colombian crystals. They had completed their monthly exchange of American coins, and the six guests were lining up to provide expert commentary on the late-breaking news that Mildred had just reported. Last night Ed finally realized his literary potential by composing a thirteen-page letter to Ms. Mode in which he announced his intention of taking early retirement and moving to Mexico to write his memoirs.

www.paulennswiebe.com/novels

from The Church of the Comic Spirit

12/15/2018

Morning. A thriving village spread over a barren desert. At the outskirts is a weather-beaten billboard: “Welcome to Abeville, Heart of the Holy Land—Celebrating 56 Years of Progress.” Main Street is reminiscent of the Old West: storefronts, wooden sidewalks, hitching posts—everything but horses and buckboards, which have been replaced by camels and a few cars (a Model aFord, a Kaiser, a VWBug).
The signs on the buildings announce:
“Abe’s Grocery”
“Holy Land Post Ofﬁce”
“Abe’s Trading Post—We Specialize in Used Camels”
“Holy Land Federal Courthouse”
“Sears, Abe’s, and Company”
“Abe’s Video”
“hlnd-tv”
“Abe’s Souvenir Shop—We Cater to the Religious Tourist”
“Abe’s Saloon”
“Holy Land Sheriff”
Behind Main Street are many residential tents. A sizeable percentage of the male citizens are loitering on Main Street, smoking, spitting tobacco, and chatting. They are dressed in traditional Middle Eastern attire, except for the Western holsters and six-shooters that are slung around their hips. They wear cowboy boots, with spurs.

from Crazy Were We in the Head

12/13/2018

After the menfolk had carried Great-grandma outside in her rocking chair, pall-bearer style, planted her in the shade of the poplar trees, tucked her in with a wool blanket, and then propped her up with half a dozen of Tante Anna’s fancy crocheted pillows, Grandpa Reisender would officially open the reunion. He’d bless the food, making sure to mention every dish the wom- enfolk had prepared. Then he’d go on to recite the list of all the ancestors he could remember, starting with Adam and Eve and half the other Biblical characters, moving on to those Reisenders who were stashed away in safe deposit boxes in some churchyard back in the Old Country, and ending with Great-grandma, even though she didn’t quite qualify as an ancestor, because she was sitting right there with her eyes closed and her head on her shoulder and her mouth wide open, sleeping like a baby. Finally, he’d end up by saying, “Thy Kingdom come, Amen,” which was the signal for Onkel Abe to wave the starting flag by booming out, “Amen, now let’s everybody loosen up and have a good time,” which was the signal for Great-grandma to give a twitch and open her one good eye and say something in German to Onkel Abe, probably advice on being reverent in the Lord’s presence. But as Aunt Lena enjoyed pointing out, that kind of advice had absolutely no effect on the man.

from Sacred Books & Sky Hooks

12/11/2018

What does Corky Ra allege happened on the day he was relaxing on his girlfriend’s couch? What is he asking us to believe?

Corky’s account of his first and defining revelation appears twice on the labyrinthine summum.us website, once in a written essay, the other in an informal question-and-answer session on the subject of his first encounter with the Summa Individuals.

“References to encounters with Beings not of this planet can be found in all major philosophies and religions dating back to the beginning of recorded history,” Corky’s essay begins, though he gives no examples or arguments for this claim. He then recounts his own encounter, taking care to say that before the event, he had always supposed that those who had reported having had personal revelations were “either lying or mentally ill.” (As a backslidden Mormon, he might have been thinking of Joseph Smith.)

more from Dancing Over the Rays of Light

12/10/2018

Wielding my cane, I sallied forth into the world beyond my private quarters.

I turned left and proceeded down a long hallway, where I continued my meditation on “Miss April,” pleased that the enigma of my sexual orientation had been resolved.

Narrator’s note to reader:
My pleasure came, not from my discovery that I was heterosexual, but from the fact that I had solved the enigma of my erotic orientation. Had I discovered that I was homosexual, I would have been equally pleased.

Description of hallway:Similar in color to the walls of my apartment. Neither too broad nor too narrow. Concrete floor camouflaged by an industrial-quality rug. Equipped on each side with a hand railing of inferior and delicate construction. Empty, save for a pair of elderly white females, one in a wheelchair, the other pushing her charge along with great difficulty, both of them approaching me.

Limping down the hallway, supported on my right by a hand railing and on my left by my stout cane, I could see from the presence of intermittent doors that my own apartment was part of a larger complex. From this I surmised that I was a resident in some kind of institution, a conjecture consistent with the appearance of the two elderly ladies.
As I advanced, I involuntarily compared the Miss April of my recent meditations with the approaching pair of Miss Decembers. This comparison elicited in me an audible chuckle, which grew by degrees into a mammoth guffaw, which, in turn, caused the two ladies, now but fifteen feet away, to look up.

Imagine my bafflement when, after the briefest of glances at my person, these same ladies emitted a pair of long, concerted shrieks. These shrieks were attended by a sudden change in their itinerary, from a slow but steady advance toward me to a rapid flight in the opposite direction.

New Prices, Crazy Were We in the Head

12/6/2018

Friesen Press has reduced the prices on Crazy Were We in the Head. Paperback copies are now $11.99; Hardcovers are $18.99; eBooks remain at $3.99.

Compare these prices with Amazon's. Paperbacks are $17.99, hardcovers $28.21, eBooks $3.99.

Friesen has shipping costs. If you qualify, Amazon ships free.

from The First American Pope

12/5/2018

CURIOUS BY NATURE, Benny Good was always intrigued by new ideas. The idea of salvation was not of course new to him; he had run across it from his years with the Amish and his months with Reverend Barnabas. Neither was the idea of sex new to him. But the idea of combining sex with salvation—this was what caught his attention and kept him in the questionnaire room with Arielle past ten-thirty, discussing the possibility of joining her new cell group devoted to the teachings of Christian Tantrism.

www.paulennswiebe.com/novels

from Just Another Dead White Male

12/4/2018

“Early retirement is now the buzzard word.”

Mildred and Thelma Blossum stopped to catch their breath in front of Le Wanderlust, a travel agency in Kirklande Centre. It was early Thursday morning before work, and the two women were doing one of their occasional puffarounds, dressed in faded joggers and worn Keds and clutching tiny barbells to their chests.

“You know what Ithink about that subject,” replied Thelma.

Yes, she knew Thelma’s thoughts on the topic of early retirement. Letting a man stay home day in and day out was about the same as putting arsenic in his chicken noodle soup, in terms of effectiveness. If he was fooling around and had good coverage the arsenic might not be a bad idea, but otherwise it wasn’t recommended, unless of course you happened to enjoy working your fingers to the bone in the checkout stand at Safeway. Those were Thelma Blossum’s thoughts on the subject, always followed by “take it from somebody who knows.”

www.paulennswiebe.com/novels