Because I'm Pretty Sure

that Brian Doyle is less than a year from stardom on the Mormon circuit, and I'm big into being there first (hats off to those of you who were actually first, Pat, Amanda, and co.), I wanted to get my two cents in.

I was feeling dark and detached late last night and couldn't sleep despite my near fatal (definitely uncharming and frustrated) exhaustion during dinner earlier in the evening and was nosing around the open boxes that are serving as bookshelves in my half-packed room. I needed something of substance, but didn't want equivocation. Enough with making things more complicated. (Doctorow, Lethem, Rushdie, Wallace all out out out.) I found Leaping. Of course. I read the Credo from "Altar Boy." Lyrical. Clear. Earnest. It was perfect and I finished the essay and I fell asleep.

I've been finding comfort in Doyle more and more often. When I finished Leaping first (in a comfy chair at the Cheers house with a manic kitten on the loose) I was ambivalent. Despite the loveliness, my comfy cynical undergraduate self wasn't sure what to do with so much hyperbole. So many adjectives. But lately, amid the mad tectonics that have defined my 26th year, I want to weave Doyle's taut clear belief and wild fluid prose into a blanket and take a nap in it.

Here is another Credo (and some pretty lame pictures, Online Catholics). Enjoy!