My god has always been a laissez-faire deity, giving you the initial goods and sending you on to make your way.

My god has always been a laissez-faire deity, giving you the initial goods and sending you on to make your way.

Ordinary life was laced with miracles, I knew that, had read enough poetry to understand that we are elevated with the knowing, and yet it was difficult to notice and be grateful when one was continually fatigued and irritated. I suppose that unquenchable sense of wonder is what separates us dolts from the saints and the poets.

Life on earth, filled with uncertainty and change, seemed far more difficult than what lay beyond the grave.

I feel like I don't have all the ingredients a person is supposed to have.

She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.

Is it love that connects us, is that what it is? I never knew that the feeling I have is regular old love because it's so-intricate. Perhaps there is another name for it, one we don't yet know. I used to think that love was simple and noticeable, like rain falling, so that just as you'd look at your skin and say Water, you would also wake in the morning and say Love. But it has been underneath, this new and old thing I feel, subterranean, silent and steady, like blood, rushing along and along without often making itself known.