Astonishingly, at some point, a sputtering torch was thrust into her hands. Alma did not see who gave it to her. She had never before been entrusted with fire. The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted across the cosmos-the only body in the heavens who was not held to a strict elliptical path. Nobody stopped her. She was a comet. She did not know that she was not flying.

What do I believe that I deserve in this life?

I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.

My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

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.

The act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship.