You’re here,” I continued. “At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?

Strong and independent? I’m neither. I’m just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not.

Where I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.

Is it against the law for me to know it?

Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.

She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.

Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.