When illness enters a home, not only does it take hold of a body. It also weaves a dark web between hearts, a web where hope is trapped.

Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.

We never look beyond our assumptions and what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves.

There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.

Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever's around them. At this very moment, as I am writing, Constitution the cat is going by with her tummy dragging close to the floor. This cat has absolutely nothing constructive to do in life and still she is heading toward something, probably an armchair.

Just as teardrops, when they are large and round and compassionate, can leave a long strand washed clean of discord, the summer rain as it washes away the motionless dust can bring to a person's soul something like endless breathing.

With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.