Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.

I nudged myself closer to the ledge and closed my eyes and thought 'Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space,' and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, 'When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.' The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats.

They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

At night I closed my eyes and saw my bones threading the mud of my grave.

When you start separating people from their rivers, what have you got? Bureaucracy!

It'll take you eternities to get rid of me,' she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I want her to say I'll never get rid of her - I wanta be chased till eternity till I catch her.

Don't tell them too much about your soul. They're waiting for just that.