I'm electric with vertigo, even though I'm on the ground, vertigo like I felt once when I stood on the edge of a high cliff in Arizona and looked straight down.

At some point, even the greatest misery begins to fade. Life, or what passes for life, plods on in it's own unending weary footsteps, and somehow we plod along with it, if we stay lucky.

In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.

For a moment, she thought it natural in a way seeing a plane fall from the sky can seem natural, too. The horror comes later.

Love is stronger than both fear and hope - if you can love the natural beauty around you, the amazing gifts and skills we have, the fact that you are alive to experience life, each moment that you have, and love yourself and those around you just as they are, then there is no need to be owned by fear, or even hope, you just live the best you can, being the truth of that love that you are being, representing the stream of consciousness experiencing itself, always knowing that you will someday return to it again, and flow as part of it infinitely on.