Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.

It is hope, not despair, that undoes us all.

Yeah. Sure. My brother's dead. My mother's insame. Hey, let's have a crepe.

There is a ghost here. A lonely, heartbroken spirit. The ghost of everything that could've been and never was.

The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.

Namaste. It was a Nepalese greeting. It meant: The light within me bows to the light within you.

The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius.