The new world lies before her eyes like an opened chest of treasure, a flock of birds over Africa, a thousand TVs all playing at once.

Only the disenfranchised can party with abandon.

Before machines the only form of entertainment people really had was relationships.

If you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis.

Good looking people with strong, fluoridated teeth get things handed to them on platters.

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.

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.