The words may be lost, but the brick survives. And the brick may be lost, but the mountain survives. For now.

If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would not be to take a different road, or even to turn back sooner. It would be to waste less time on shame.

At a reading I attended last month, an essayist exploring the nature of holes mentioned that the philosophical term for what surrounds a hole is a host. A hole, of course, cannot exist without its host.

Perhaps I have a faulty circuit in my brain, but suddenly the most urgent thing was to explore, to find an adventure; something that would allow me to ignore the state of my marriage.

I cannot bring myself to make the gesture that happens on television.  That, there, is fiction. This, here, is real.