Here are some more-poised than usual thoughts on the first ten years of this record label-like thing I've been running. To cover the entire bodily spectrum in a single mixed metaphor, I'd like to think this piece is a bit less of a gut-level kneejerk response than I usually muster, a bit more of a heady, meditative deep thought.

I just posted an excerpt from chapter three of In Defense of Religious Moderation on the blog Religion in American History (http://usreligion.blogspot.com/). As the editor, Paul Harvey, notes, the "post is particularly timely here after the events in Norway and yesterday's commemoration of 9/11, both of which suggest that the ancient ideal of moderation still has an awful lot going for it."

On September 12, 2001, I wrote a thing about the day before. (Though I was living in Brooklyn at the time, that week I just happened to be in Los Angeles.) Here it is with some pictures I took when I returned to New York.

An explosion is frightening not only because it threatens me. An explosion is frightening because it's ontologically uncanny. This uncanniness underlies the physical threat. What uncanniness? Quite simply, an object that just functions in “my world”—a plane, a skyscraper—suddenly comes to life in a very different way. My world wavers for a moment—even collapses.

It was the year 1999.  It was in hot Phoenix, Arizona, when I wrote this poem.  It was a time when everybody was excited about the new age, where you could have gotten in touch with your friends on different continents through the Internet and low cost phone calls.