A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down.

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

She wondered if literature might lose some of its interest when she reached an age or state of mind where her life was set on such a sure course that the things she read might stop seeming so powerfully like alternate directions for her being.

A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down.

The past is a stronger influence in the South. But I think everywhere you have this sense that the world changes faster than you can accommodate yourself to. Looking back and seeing how you got where you are is a useful way to combat disorientation.

Or maybe it is only that we are so habitually inattentive that when some rare but simple geometry grabs us by the shoulders and shakes us into consciousness, we call our response sacred.