The Shell The sea fills my ear with sand and with fear. You may wash out the sand, but never the sound of the ghost of the sea that is haunting me.

Show him every dawn & read to him endlessly.

That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.

He was his own leftover, the spat-out scrag. He was what his brain could make nothing of.

And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne.

So we found the end of our journey. So we stood, alive in the river of light, Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.