In Praise of Fallibility, Everybodyism & Confusers of Certainty

Where universalism maintains only that "all humans will be saved, whatever their sect or non-sect," essayist Amy Leach's everybodyism espouses a more playful and radical redemption for "not just all the human rascals but also all the buffalo rascals and reptile rascals and paddlefish and turkeys and centipedes and wombats and warty pigs." While Leach's admiration for Earth and its inhabitants is seemingly inexhaustible, it is not unaware. Her essays surface, often in lyrically satirical ways, the inconsiderate and often unconsidered impact we humans -- with our conquests, our categories, our need for control and our appetite for consumption -- have on this finite and fallible world. The trajectory of this essayist's writing is not predictable like an orbit, but incalculable like a dream. It seems to follow an inner impetus, bent only on discovering what happens when the writer's thought breaks free of habit, and encounters itself and this shape-shifting world. "There are not just cliches of phrases and words," Amy maintains, "but cliches of thought too, and that is something worth fighting." Part of this fight on the page involves "an exorcism of personal and cultural programming." To root out, so as not to simply reproduce conventional thinking...Says Amy, "A lot of the things that I'm celebrating,like babies. music and donkeys, are really beautiful confusers of certainty...."

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