mattereaterlad2

"When you have spent as long inside yourself as I have you learn a certain humility in the face of hardship. And then you learn it again. It takes years to become as softhearted and hopeful as I am. I had no business dancing with a young woman like that. I should have known better.

The heart is not only a lonely hunter, though it certainly is that. It is a drowning salesman, a bloodied clown, an incurable disease. We pay dearly for its every decision. There are a lucky few, dead in certain vital places, who learn to tame their passions.

But I am certain that you, too, have some episode in your life that lines up against this one, some mad period of transgression in which your body, your foolish foolish body, led you toward tender ruin. And sometimes, at night, you must lie awake and ask yourself: How could I have done this? How ever, in the world, might I have become such a fool? How do I stop? And when? When? When will I have her again?"

--Steve Almond, My Life In Heavy Metal

One of my favorite passages in recent years. I read the story, "The body in Extremis", weekly now, just to get to that. Doc read it into my voicemail months ago. I saved the message and listen to it now and then, her perfect reading, her perfect inflection. It's as unguarded as she has ever been with me.

It means everything.

It takes years to become as softhearted and hopeful as I am.