Don't Get Discouraged If You're Hammering Away

Her Forehead Was A Maze Of Anxious Little Grooves, From A Lifetime Of Wondering About Whether Everyone Within Range Was Ok.

...and Our Footsteps Rang And Echoed Till It Sounded Like The Room Was Full Of Dancers, The House Calling Up All The People Who Had Danced Here Across Centuries Of Spring Evenings, Gallant Girls Seeing Gallant Boys Off To War, Old Men And Women Straight-backed While Outside Their World Disintegrated And The New One Battered At Their Doors, All Of Them Bruised And All Of Them Laughing, Welcoming Us Into Their Long Lineage.

I Had Always Felt That I Was An Observer, Never A Participant; That I Was Watching From Behind A Thick Glass Wall As People Went About The Business Of Living--and Did It With Such Ease, With A Skill That They Took For Granted And That I Had Never Known.

Sometimes I Think About The Sly, Flickering Line That Separates Being Spared From Being Rejected. Sometimes I Think Of The Ancient Gods Who Demanded That Their Sacrifices Be Fearless And Without Blemish, And I Wonder Whether, Whoever Or Whatever Took Peter And Jamie Away, It Decided I Wasn't Good Enough.

The Smell Of The Sea Swept Over The Wall And In Through The Empty Window-hole, Wide And Wild With A Million Intoxicating Secrets. I Don't Trust That Smell. It Hooks Us Somewhere Deeper Than Reason Or Civilization, In The Fragments Of Our Cells That Rocked In Oceans Before We Had Minds, And It Pulls Till We Follow Mindlessly As Rutting Animals....it Lures Us To Leap Off High Cliffs, Fling Ourselves On Towering Waves, Leaves Behind Everyone We Love And Face Into Thousands Of Miles Of Open Water For The Sake Of What Might Be On The Far Shore.