ESCAPING THE 21st CENTURY

I sit at table reading the newspaper while my girlfriend is fixing dinner.

I pretend what I'm reading is a special art edition of the newspaper, featuring images of unspeakable horror from the early avant-garde surrealist, futurist and dadaist movements: racial wars, beheadings, prized artifacts from ancient civilizations demolished in one bomb blast. More images more more and getting worse as I look. But these aren't facts, I tell myself. Only wildly IMAGINED atrocities.

Well, that works for awhile. But only for awhile.

Pretty soon the terrible realities of our century ooze through despite the many efforts I make to suppress them.

Ain't gonna work, I say to myself and refold the newspaper.

I watch my girlfriend open a cupboard and shake some flour into a bowl. I wonder what she's whipping up for dessert.Then she walks over to the stove. I watch her bending over the oven in her plaid skirt as she stirs the casserole, bending over and bending over...

Ah, those lovely buns!!

I know then God is in Heaven and all is right with the world!