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# 1

I dreamt I was in a silk tent, and its sheets were billowing lightly in the hot desert wind. Inside and outside the tent hung many brightly colored flags and banners. A woman was reading my cards. She had sapphires for eyes, actual sapphires, and they were set in her dark, tanned face with diamond lashes and kohl eyeliner.

She told me I was going to climb a mountain, to stand at the top of it, to shout out my name, over and over again.

# 2

Peaceful indifference is more powerful than anger.

# 3

What would it be like to engage a theoretical physicist in discussion?

I would ask him about time travel. The factuality of the Big Bang theory. And magical places where gravity works in reverse.

# 4

Talking to cancer patients and attending chemo sessions with people I don't know from Adam (then becoming friends with them afterwards) has humbled me in so many ways I wish I could justly express.

One patient said she wanted to kill herself during her third cycle: it was that difficult. She was vomiting at least 12 hours everyday, she had constant diarrhea, and she couldn't eat properly. She had Stage III.A breast cancer. The prognosis was grim. The first time she looked at herself in the mirror naked - and saw the gaping space where her left breast had been for 20 years of her life - she broke down and cried.

"I do not cry," she said, "but I couldn't help it."

She survived it. Now 12 years in remission, she is happier than when she was before she had cancer. "I am missing a breast," she explains, "but I feel more whole now, with my faith in God restored, than I ever was 20 or 30 years ago."

# 5

You would play Fast Car (Chapman) while you drove fast. That is how your brain works: in parallel lines. You are only 16. You could have been my little brother. The world to you is black and white. You believe all people are inherently good. I envy your innocence. The line of your neck is an untrammeled island, white and thin and pure. You tell me you wish someone would kiss you already: I laugh, and advise you to be patient. It will come when it comes. You will be beautiful when you grow up.

Strangely enough, you tell me the same.