Like a medical procedure,' Ruth said. 'Intricate surgery is needed to patch up the planet.

I would do exactly what you are doing: I would talk to everyone I needed to, I would not tell too many people his name. When I was sure," she said, "I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him.

There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.

I left my mark on that man.

Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go

I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it.

Hold still," my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised the mast with and set the clipper ship free on its blue putty sea. And I would wait for him, recognizing the tension of that moment when the world in the bottle depended, solely, on me.