When I go biking, I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.

We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?

To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.

Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.

When I go biking, I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.

What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. ... they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception.