My husband is not American. He was born in Brazil, where he grew up under a filthy, corrupt dictatorship. In his twenties, he moved to Europe, where he lived for a while under various socialist democracies. He spent a few years on a kibbutz in Israel, living out a utopian experiment in communal existence.

I think I deserve something beautiful.

The best we can do then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally - no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.

And then, in that regal silence, finally - I began to meditate on (and with) God.

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.

Admittedly, I am not the one who looks fantastic in everything, but still I cannot help loving myself.

Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.