The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst.

Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.

Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!

When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.

Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.

The truth doesn't care what we think of it.

Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.