They just felt familiar with me. It has been a constant reminder of the hidden motivations of all our actions. The signals we send. The language we all speak and cannot hear.

If our shittiest actions can lead to beauty, what does it mean to do right and wrong? Is it about avoiding hurting others? What about the scripture, “All things work for the good of those who love God.” That sounds about right. But some things never get good. They’re just terrible and then you die.

But the charm wore off, and I knew I could bike away and enjoy my good fortune of being born white in the world’s richest country. I still don’t know what to do with all that. The hardened soul of reality, dividing rich from poor like it does. All I can do is be honest. I was ready to see nice buildings well built, to rest in some of the creature

“Yeah, mysticism is when you don’t have intellectual certainty about stuff, but experientially you do believe in things, like beauty and mystery and the universe as a force for good. You move beyond the dualism of good and evil to a more unified whole, a sense that everything belongs.”

How can I describe this? There is a light that we recognize in the eyes of someone with whom we would say we “connect.” This means we have life experience in common. Or culture perhaps. Subtle movements of their eyes, the way they glance around the room, the way they furrow their brow, you can tell so much about a person. We are unaware that our

and down, and those who threw up for two

out. I needed to see different things to remind me what I was, in contrast to what I already knew. To see clearly what I had become.

“I am twenty-four years old and I have still done nothing…I am sure it’s not for nothing that I have been struggling with all my doubts and passions for the past eight years. But what am I destined for? Only time will tell.” I was thirty years old reading this, sitting by a river in Mexico, wondering what I had done with my life. I knew it wasn’t

Human beings have little capacity for sustained horror. I