Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.

Everyone has a special place they store their tension (I'm on shiatsu duty), the same way everyone misspells the same words over and over. Karla stores her tension in her rhomboid muscles, and I remove it. This is making me feel good. That I can do this.

Mom said that people are interested in birds only in as much as they exhibit human behavior - greed and stupidity and anger - and by doing so they free us from the unique sorrow of being human...I told Mom my own theory of why we like birds - of how birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.

How can I be a part of the 1960s generation when I don't even remember any of it?

TV is all about hair. And then skin. And then clothing. And then it's about your voice. And finally the report, what you're actually saying. And 99 times out of 100, it never gets past the hair.

Later, I would learn that coincidences are the most planned things in the world. Later, I would learn that every single moment is a coincidence.

I think writing would have happened to me anyway, somehow. Differently, but it still would have happened.