“Again,' he said and, without waiting for an answer, ran into the growing dark without fear, every single part of his body overwhelmed with the task of being alive.”

“Let us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not that the mind is overwhelmed and drowned in body. For the principal attribute of the Gods, without or within us, is mind.”

“Crumb,” he said.“What?”A slight grin appeared on his face and then he reached out, without the napkin, and before I knew what he was doing, he smoothed his thumb over my bottom lip. Every single muscle in my body locked up and became painfully tense. My eyes widened and the air caught in my throat. The touch was slight, barely anything, but I felt it in several parts of my body.“Got it.” His grin spread.”

“What he was afraid of, he’d come to realize, was not dark spaces or falling from great heights or being buried alive. His greatest fears, in the end, were letting down those he loved and saying the words “I love you” without any hope of hearing them in return.”

“My fears?”“Yes.”“I fear oblivion,” he said without a moment’spause. “I fear it like the proverbialblind man who’s afraid of the dark.”

“Fear of this order is not an emotion. It is like a virus overwhelming every cell of his body, while his mind struggles to remain clear.”