I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

As Steve draws me closer to the band, all I can see is a frenzied mass of seething, writhing people, like a many-headed sea snake, grinding, waving their arms, stamping their feet, jumping. No rules, just energy - so much energy, you could harness it; I bet you could power Portland for a decade. It is more than a wave. It's a tide, an ocean of bodies.

We all need mantras, I guess - stories we tell ourselves to keep us going.

We’ll go.” Her voice is surprisingly deep and forceful. Set in her sunken, shipwreck face, her eyes burn like two smoldering coals. “We’ll fight.

Most of the time-- 99 percent of the time-- you just don't know how and why the threads are looped together, and that's okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes.

It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day - you can think you know them - and then you fшnd out you hardly know them at all.