It is a beautiful world for the people who get to play the fist.

Mary bring out your umbrella - The sun shines down on this fine, fine day But the ashes raining down forever Are going to turn your hair to gray. Mary keep your oars a-steady Sail away on the rising flood Keep your candle at the ready Red tides can't be told from blood. - "Miss Mary" (a common child's clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play

In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.

I'm used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

Everything I see and touch reminds me of him, and so everything I see and touch is perfect.

Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately, for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going.