For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. Such are the autumn people.

Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.

And the lesson was this; sit in the sun, head down, within a prickly vine, in a flickery light, or open light, and the world will come to you. The sky will come in its time, bringing rain, and the earth will rise through you, from beneath, and make you rich and make you full.

All education is self-discovery.

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

So it was the hand that started it all . . . His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms . . . His hands were ravenous.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again.