( continues...) charity, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.

Sail, this:

Grocery shopping is an exercise in futility, anymore.

Reads oddly. anymore isn't the word there, I don't think. Nowadays, maybe?

OTOH, this:

Two ideas opposed to each other, agape and eros

made me extremely happy.

Yes, I think your choice scans better. Ima go change it.

Very thought provoking, Sail.

I particularly love "two bodies worshipping together."

Those are great. The "anymore" is a construction my East Texas (now San Diego) grandmother uses, btw.

I think it pinged me because "anymore" is always associated with a negative, IME. I wouldn't say "I used to cry. Now I laugh, anymore." I'd only associate that with the not-doing, as something that once was, but now isn't: "I used to cry. Now I don't cry, anymore.Or, alternately, "I used to cry. Now I laugh instead."

The "anymore" is a construction my East Texas (now San Diego) grandmother uses, btw.

It's what I grew up with, but there are a few regionalism that tend to be very regional. Deb's suggestion will probably be more recognizable to more people. Sometimes, I think I start to channel my Grandmother (who was from North Dakota and grew up calling electricity "the electric"), which can be interesting, but not always completely understandable to the masses.

If you're interested in very arcane lifestyles that don't exist anymore, look up a book called "The Last of the Sod Houses." It's about my grandmother's and some other families that grew up in North Dakota at the turn of the century. It was self-published, so it's not easy to find. I don't even know if I have my copy anymore, with all the moves I've done.

I wouldn't say "I used to cry. Now I laugh, anymore."

That's pretty much how my grandmother would say it, though. Not that the edit to Sail's piece didn't make it more clear to more people, but that the original was not wrong, just regional.

Jesse, yup, I get the regional - more than twenty years of being back in the States hasn't leeched all the London slang out of me, and I get the occasional blank "huh?" look from non-travelling American friends who have no clue what "parky" or "his Hampton" might mean.

It really is just a question of what the majority of readers are likely to recognise.

Okay, deb, those are two I've never come across and I thought I had a good familitarity with most Britishisms. Now, you're going to have to explain to all of us what "parky" and "his Hampton" mean.