We thread our way through a moving forest of ice-cream cones and crimson thighs.

I need to feel strongly, to love and admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.

We thread our way through a moving forest of ice-cream cones and crimson thighs.

If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere.

Does the cosmos contain keys for opening my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking.

Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.

Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark . . . I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship. It will keep the vultures at bay.