“Origins and History of ConsciousnessIII.It’s simple to wake from sleep with a stranger,dress, go out, drink coffee,enter a life again. It isn’t simpleto wake from sleep into the neighborhoodof one neither strange nor familiarwhom we have chosen to trust. Trusting, untrusting,we lowered ourselves into this, let ourselvesdownward hand over hand as on a rope that quiveredover the unsearched…. We did this. Conceivedof each other, conceived each other in a darknesswhich I remember as drenched in light. I want to call this, life.But I can’t call it life until we start to movebeyond this secret circle of firewhere our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wallwhere the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleepslike a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner.”

“I didn't want to wake up either. We both held onto each other. We looked at each other before we closed our eyes and let go of her.”

“There are those who wake up each morning to conquer the day, and then there are those of us who wake up only because we have to. We live in the shadow of every neighborhood. We own little corner stores, live in run-down apartments that get too little light, and walk the same streets day after day. We spend our afternoons gazing lazily out of windows. Somnambulists, all of us. Someone else said it better: we wake to sleep and sleep to wake.”

“That day we held our hands and each other was indeed a beautiful dream. But, we all wake up in the end.”

“In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.”

“And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives,Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake,How if our waking life, like that of sleep,Be all a dream in that eternal lifeTo which we wake not till we sleep in death”