There's not a lot of room for un-ironic emotion in contemporary culture. I think that irony is an important tool in dealing with the world as we find it. It's a tool of protection, but it can also be a tool of incision to get to some truth. But along the way maybe we've lost some of what I think of as the power of straightforward emotion and earnestness and seriousness.

I was thinking about this girl you love so much," she said, "And this place I love so much. And how that happens. How you can just fall into it.

In these pages, and in my memories, she reminds me that a short life can also be a good and rich life, that it is possible to live with depression without being consumed by it, and that meaning in life is found together, in family and friendship that transcends and survives all manner of suffering. As the poet wrote in the Bible's Song of Solomon, 'Love is strong as death.' Or perhaps even stronger.

It is worth it to leave behing my minor life for grander maybes.

Barnacles on the container ship of consciousness.

I'm just reveling in the glory of not having to hear the neediness and impotence of my own voice.

You will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorists of Ambiguous Nationality!