Pain for the old was no longer a surprise.

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

I got here the same way the coin did.

The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.

Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?

Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else.