If You Rewrite A Paragraph Fifty Times

I Had Learned Early To Assume Something Dark And Lethal Hidden At The Heart Of Anything I Loved. When I Couldn't Find It, I Responded, Bewildered And Wary, In The Only Way I Knew How: By Planting It There Myself.

I Can't Explain The Alchemy That Transmuted One Evening Into The Equivalent Of Years Held Lightly In Common. The Only Way I Can Put It Is That We Recognized, Too Surely Even For Surprise, That We Shared The Same Currency.

I Came From A House Full Of Books, So I Took Reading For Granted. I Was An Outdoorsy Little Kid, Too, So I Got The Best Of Both Worlds By Taking Books Up Trees And Reading There.

Have You Noticed How Easily The Very Young Die? They Make The Best Martyrs For Any Cause, The Best Soldiers, The Best Suicides. It's Because They're Held Here So Lightly: They Haven't Yet Accumulated Loves And Responsibilities And Commitments And All The Things That Tie Us Securely To This World. They Can Let Go Of It As Easily And Simply As Lifting A Finger. But As You Get Older, You Begin To Find Things That Are Worth Holding Onto, Forever.

Now That's A Concept That's Always Fascinated Me: The Real World. Only A Very Specific Subset Of People Use The Term, Have You Noticed? To Me, It Seems Self-evident That Everyone Lives In The Real World - We All Breathe Real Oxygen, Eat Real Food, The Earth Under Our Feet Feels Equally Solid To All Of Us. But Clearly These People Have A Far More Tightly Circumscribed Definition Of Reality, One That I Find Deeply Mysterious, And An Almost Pathologically Intense Need To Bring Others Into Line With That Definition.