But the world did not match the picture in my head, and instead I was with a strange, uncombed person, overlooking a sea without water and a forest without trees.

If you have ever slept in a covered casserole dish on the highest peak of a mountain range, then you know that it is an uncomfortable place to lay one's head, even if you find a dish towel inside it that can serve as a blanket.

It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right.

I can see it, Ed, I leaned deeper into you, felt you nodding along with the sounds in the room, and your warmth signaled through to me from under your shirt, lovely strong, safe and right.

Like People, animals will become frightened and likely do whatever you say if you whip them enough.

The idea that the curtain rises on what is often more or less a happy scene, and it will fall just a few hours later, and everyone will be dead or have gone mad... I find that kind of narrative very appealing.

It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.