When We Can't See A Pattern, We

Now Death Is Uncool, Old-fashioned. To My Mind The Defining Characteristic Of Our Era Is Spin, Everything Tailored To Vanishing Point By Market Research, Brands And Bands Manufactured To Precise Specifications; We Are So Used To Things Transmuting Into Whatever We Would Like Them To Be That It Comes As A Profound Outrage To Encounter Death, Stubbornly Unspinnable, Only And Immutably Itself.

It Took My Breath Away, That Evening. If You've Ever Dreamed That You Walked Into Your Best-loved Book Or Film Or Tv Program, Then Maybe You've Got Some Idea How It Felt: Things Coming Alive Around You, Strange And New And Utterly Familiar At The Same Time; The Catch In Your Heartbeat As You Move Through The Rooms That Had Such A Vivid Untouchable Life In Your Mind, As Your Feet Actually Touch The Carpet, As You Breathe The Air; The Odd, Secret Glow Of Warmth As These People You've Been Watching For So Long, From So Far Away, Open Their Circle And Sweep You Into It.

I've Got This Theory That Human Beings Are Innately Religious; We Have A Belief System. It Doesn't Have To Be A Theist Form, Necessarily. But We Need A Belief System, Some Framework On Which To Hang Our Behavior.

Don't You Ever Feel That - That You Just Need To Get Away? From Everything? That It's All Too Much?

You Forget What It Was Like. You'd Swear On Your Life You Never Will, But Year By Year It Falls Away. How Your Temperature Ran Off The Mercury, Your Heart Galloped Flat-out And Never Needed To Rest, Everything Was Pitched On The Edge Of Shattering Glass. How Wanting Something Was Like Dying Of Thirst. How Your Skin Was Too Fine To Keep Out Any Of The Million Things Flooding By; Every Color Boiled Bright Enough To Scald You, Any Second Of Any Day Could Send You Soaring Or Rip You To Bloody Shreds.