“Some departure from the normWill occur as time grows more open about it.The consensus gradually changed; nobodyLies about it any more. Rust dark pouringOver the body, changing it without decay—People with too many things on their minds, but we liveIn the interstices, between a vacant stare and the ceiling,Our lives remind us. Finally this is consciousnessAnd the other livers of it get off at the same stop.How careless. Yet in the end each of usIs seen to have traveled the same distance—it’s timeThat counts, and how deeply you have invested in it,Crossing the street of an event, as though coming out of it wereThe same as making it happen. You’re not sorry,Of course, especially if this was the way it had to happen,Yet would like an exacter share, something about timeThat only a clock can tell you: how it feels, not what it means.It is a long field, and we know only the far end of it,Not the part we presumably had to go through to get there.If it isn’t enough, take the ideaInherent in the day, armloads of wheat and flowersLying around flat on handtrucks, if maybe it means moreIn pertaining to you, yet what is is what happens in the endAs though you cared. The event combined withBeams leading up to it for the look of force adapted to the wiserUsages of age, but it’s both thereAnd not there, like washing or sawdust in the sunlight,At the back of the mind, where we live now.”

“What name do I have for you?Certainly there is no name for youIn the sense that the stars have namesThat somehow fit them. Just walking around,An object of curiosity to some,But you are too preoccupiedBy the secret smudge in the back of your soulTo say much and wander around,Smiling to yourself and others.It gets to be kind of lonelyBut at the same time off-putting.Counterproductive, as you realize once againThat the longest way is the most efficient way,The one that looped among islands, andYou always seemed to be traveling in a circle.And now that the end is nearThe segments of the trip swing open like an orange.There is light in there and mystery and food.Come see it.Come not for me but it.But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.”

“If you’re reading these words, perhaps it’s because something has kicked open the door for you, and you’re ready to embrace change. It isn’t enough to appreciate change from afar, or only in the abstract, or as something that can happen to other people but not to you. We need to create change for ourselves, in a workable way, as part of our everyday lives.”

“When I've thought about him dying - which admittedly isn't that much - I always thought of it like you said, that all strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships think, or maybe we're grass - our roots are so interdependent that no one is dead as long as soneone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications...I like the strings, I always have. Because that's how it feels. But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is...We are not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me imagine you as an actual person. But we're not different sprouts from the same plant. I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well- but not quite perfectly, you know?"Maybe, it's more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen-these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable...But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see each other, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never looking inside. But once the vessel cracks, the like can get in. The like can get out.”

“Remember how I said nothing changes everything? I think I was wrong about that. I'm starting to think that maybe everything changes everything. That we never know what's going to happen next and we're not even supposed to. Maybe 'Z' is the shape of everyone's life. You're going along in what feels like a straight line, headed for one horizon, the only one as far as you know, and then something happens, maybe something good, maybe something terrible, or maybe just something like seeing a guy picking out a cantelope at the store, something that feels like nothing, and all of a sudden you're headed at another horizon altogether. Good things can happen that you did nothing to deserve. Bad things can happen that aren't anyone's fault. And it's sad how, if you let yourself, it's so much easier to think about what you've lost instead of what you have left. I'm not saying everything's okay, because it's not. We will never, ever be the same without you. We have our good days and bad days as a family, and you will always be the invisible center of both. But love is this really powerful thing that everyone's got if they'd just learn how to accept it. I mean, come on. If it's something we all have to give, and it's something we all want, doesn't that mean there's exactly enough to go around?”

“Maybe it’s more like you said before, all of us being cracked open, like, each of us starts out as a watertight vessel, and these things happen, these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places, and I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable, once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled, but there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart, and it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks, and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks, and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

“Sure, cried the tenant men,but it’s our land…We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours….That’s what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.""We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.""Yes, but the bank is only made of men.""No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”