As the most social apes, we inhabit a mirror-world in which every important relationship, whether with spouse, friend or child, shapes the brain, which in turn shapes our relationships.

Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.

We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.

Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.

We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention

Our skin is what stands between us and the world.