Country People Do Not Behave As If

Henry David Thoreau, Who Never Earned Much Of A Living Or Sustained A Relationship With Any Woman That Wasn't Brotherly -- Who Lived Mostly Under His Parents' Roof . . . Who Advocated One Day's Work And Six Days "off" As The Weekly Round And Was Considered A Bit Of A Fool In His Hometown . . . Is Probably The American Writer Who Tells Us Best How To Live Comfortably With Our Most Constant Companion, Ourselves.

Our Loneliness Makes Us Avid Column Readers These Days.

A Mountain With A Wolf On It Stands A Little Taller.

Animals Used To Provide A Lowlife Way To Kill And Get Away With It, As They Do Still, But, More Intriguingly, For Some People They Are An Aperture Through Which Wounds Drain. The Scapegoat Of Olden Times, Driven Off For The Bystanders Sins, Has Become A Tender Thing, A Running Injury. There, Running Away Is Me: Hurt It And You Are Hurting Me.

It's Incongruous That The Older We Get, The More Likely We Are To Turn In The Direction Of Religion. Less Vivid And Intense Ourselves, Closer To The Grave, We Begin To Conceive Of Ourselves As Immortal.