The Drawbridge and the Moat
A long-haired hippie girl sits on a patch of summer grass, in uniform -- sandals, tattered jeans, gold bangles and multicolored tunic.
She shakes her mane out of anxiety triggered by the gaze of a boy whom she desires. She does not make eye contact with him. About an hour later, she shakes her mane out of anxiety triggered by the gaze of a boy whom she finds repulsive. She does not make eye contact with him.
Introspection equal to the moment is not to be found in the heart of either boy.
Christopher Hitchens Said
That everyone chooses his own regrets. My mother, for example, regretted on some level that she did not marry another man, a particular man, a very handsome man, a man whose name I knew, because he was more successful than my father. If she had married him, no doubt she would have had other regrets.
"If only I could molt," I said. If I could unzip this rubbery carapace from the inside out, emerging as someone else. Freddie Sayers. James Spader. Rod Laver. Duke Ellington.
Another sort of molting. Some hospice workers say that a puff of smoke or fog rises up from the newly-lifeless corpse. It quickly dissipates, by all accounts that I have counted.
