'Planted rows went turning past like giant spokes one by one as they ranged the roads. The skies were interrupted by dark gray storm clouds with a flow like molten stone, swept and liquid, and light that found its way through them was lost in the dark fields but gathered shining along the pale road, so that sometimes all you could see was the road, and the horizon it ran to. Sometimes she was overwhelmed by the green life passing in such high turbulence, too much to see, all clamoring to have its way. Leaves sawtooth, spade-shaped, long and thin, blunt-fingered, downy and veined, oiled and dusty with the day—flowers in bells and clusters, purple and white or yellow as butter, star-shaped ferns in the wet and dark places, millions of green veilings before the bridal secrets in the moss and under the deadfalls, went on by the wheels creaking and struck by rocks in the ruts, sparks visible only in what shadow it might pass over, a busy development of small trailside shapes tumbling in what had to be deliberately arranged precision, herbs the wildcrafters knew the names and market prices of and which the silent women up in the foothills, counterparts whom they most often never got even to meet, knew the magic uses for. They lived for different futures, but they were each other's unrecognized halves, and what fascination between them did come to pass was lit up, beyond question, with grace.'

'With his popular authority established, the man then ordered the driver to report her exhaustion.'

Spring, and snow.

'… nichts als Welt.'

'It is high time for me to leave a world that is fast leaving me and that I shall not mourn.'

'And cynicism is also a kind of faith…'

'… in a certain sense it seems that not wanting is the only good.'

Just as I was walking by, an old man shuffling along the icy sidewalk fell down. And his wife fell down. Only I was spared. The first thing that came into my head as I helped them up was to say, 'Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, what's going on here?', as if there was way too much falling down going on. The old man was embarrassed, acting perplexed about what manner of bedeviling surfaces he was unfairly forced to contend with. 'Oh, I fall down all the time', I reassured him. (But I don't, not anymore, since I got new winter boots.)

'Oh, bless your heart', his wife told me.

'... there must be something else to strive for, something that seems possible or realizable...'