Are we all just Dark Age doctors, swearing by our leeches? We crave a greater science. We want to be proven wrong.

I don't know... there's something kind of beautiful about it, don't you think? That we keep living and growing even though our world is a corpse? That we keep coming back no matter how many of us die?

Maybe this is why I sleep only a few hours a month. I don't want to die again. This has become clearer and clearer to me recently, a desire so sharp and focused I can hardly believe it's mine: I don't want to die. I don't want to disappear. I want to stay.

It's hard to take your life so seriously when you can see it all at once.

I hate that she's hurt. I hate that she's been hurt, by me and by others, throughout the entire arc of her life. I barely remember pain, but when I see it in her I feel it in myself, in disproportionate measure. it creeps into my eyes, stinging, burning.

Everything you see, you might be seeing for the last time.

I wince at her use of the word "human." I've never liked that differentiation. She is living and I'm dead, but we're both human. Call me an idealist.