“I felt sad because I knew I couldn't hold the ocean's beauty for long enough, nor the sun and the salty wind; and yet, I was happy because I knew I took part of the ocean with me, and the remembrance of the ages with the salt impregnated onto my skin. This is how I felt as the sun was setting, dipping into the ocean, slowly moaning in silence, as the salt and wind eclipsed it, and silence broke free with the night's veil of shadows.”

“Because tonight is perfect. The sun is really setting now and it’s beautiful. The oranges and reds and golds are shining over the horizon and onto our skin and everything is romantic and dreamy. It’s like a dream, actually. I lean up and kiss Dante’s cheek and he smells like the ocean and the salt and the sun. And maybe the woodsy scent of the olive groves. I sigh. There’s no way that life gets any better than this. I settle back into his side for the drive and he wraps his arm around me.”

“The moment I took hold of the line, I felt the mighty tug of the wind coursing into my palm and wrist, and there I stayed, transfixed. The pwer in that topgallant sail suddenly awed me, and yet it was among the smaller sails on the mast. It was a mere speck on the ocean, catching an infinitesimal fraction of all the howling winds that crossed the wide seas. I literally could not move a muscle, trying in vain to absorb the magnitude of it.And there was something else, as well. This wind was blowing me westward. I was hurtling into my own predestined future. With neither star nor compass, I knew the heading of this wind. It bore down on a lonely river crossing in one of the last wild places on Earth, where timber moaned in a gale, and frosty grass sparkled in the dawn, and beasts lumbered and thundered the valley. A sacred place protected by Comanches.”

“I heard silence, silence infinite as the bottom of the ocean, a silence that sealed.”

“I went back to the ocean for a wash. The salt stung my face. I didn't know my skin was so raw. I slung my backpack over my shoulders, and with the white mosquito netting wrapped around me like a wedding dress, I went back into the jungle.”

“Once the scent caught me on the street in Greenwich Village. I stopped in my tracks and looked around. Where was it coming from? A shop? The trees? A passerby? I could not tell. I only knew the smell made me cry. I stood on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village as people brushed by, and felt suddenly young and terribly open, as if I were waiting for something. I live in an ocean of smell, and the ocean is my mother.”