Memory Is A Complicated Thing, A Relative

He Had Senile Dementia And Liked To Go Outside Naked, But He Could Still Do Two Things Perfectly: Win At Checkers And Write Out Prescriptions.

To Be Hopeful, To Embrace One Possibility After Another--that Is Surely The Basic Instinct. Baser Even Than Hate, The Thing With Teeth, Which Can Be Stilled With A Tone Of Voice Or Stunned By Beauty. If The Whole World Of The Living Has To Turn On The Single Point Of Remaining Alive, That Pointed Endurance Is The Poetry Of Hope. The Thing With Feathers.

I'm Not Pretending To Be Ingenuous; I Know What I'm Doing.

The Death Of Something Living Is The Price Of Our Own Survival, And We Pay It Again And Again. We Have No Choice. It Is The One Solemn Promise Every Life On Earth Is Born And Bound To Keep.

The Moth Settled Onto The Curtain And Sat Still. It Was An Astonishing Creature, With Black And White Wings Patterned In Geometric Shapes, Scarlet Underwings, And A Fat White Body With Black Spots Running Down It Like A Snowman's Coal Buttons. No Human Eye Had Looked At This Moth Before; No One Would See Its Friends. So Much Detail Goes Unnoticed In The World.