When You Love Somebody, Or Something, Its

American Companies Spend More Than $200 Billion Each Year Hacking Women's Bodies Into Bits And Pieces, Urging Comparisons Between Self And Other, Linking Value To Air-brushed Ideals, And As The Girls In My Seventh-grade Class Graduated To High School And Beyond, The Imagery Around Us Would Only Grow More Specific, More Pummeling, More Insidious.

Passivity Is Corrosive To The Soul; It Feeds On Feelings Of Integrity And Pride, And It Can Be As Tempting As A Drug.

Solitude Is A Breeding Ground For Idiosyncrasy, And I Relish That About It, The Way It Liberates Whim.

I Once Heard A Woman Who Had Lost Her Dog Say That She Felt As Though A Color Were Suddenly Missing From Her World: The Dog Had Introduced To Her Field Of Vision Some Previously Unavailable Hue And Without A Dog, That Color Was Gone. That Seemed To Capture The Experience Of Loving A Dog With Eminent Simplicity. I'd Amend It Only Slightly And Say That If We Are Open To What They Have To Give, Dogs Can Introduce Us To Several Colors With Names Like Wildness, Nurturance, Trust And Joy.

Consumerism Thrives On Emotional Voids.