In the desert, an office not-love story. Outside, the scorpions chatter.

And it is woman remember, who bears the shield: for both the Greeks and the Romans. She wields it up and over her man, on every coin we can find.

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If Camus’ Stranger had existed in the wilds of Arizona, he would surely have composed these barefaced ruminations, gnarly and gnomic for a hyperconnected and troubled time.

Alex M. Frankel, author of Birth Mother Mercy