from it might not kill

There is a distance in these moments, so that the flood of time may take me further from a perfect memory. And so it becomes necessary to make new ones.

And there is the ocean.

And there is the way bodies with mass distort space and time, curving in such a way that all things impose a gravitational effect on every other object within range of the distortion. I should like to ride one of the waves of these distortions, as I once did in the ocean as a boy in Huntington.

And all the lights had gone out in the Westin, only Venus was now visible in the sky above the dark building. I took my blue pen out and hurriedly scribbled, "Venus replaces Westin" on the yellow pulp, momentarily forgetting that Miki, with her small frame, her glasses, and inexplicable joy, had reminded me of a girl from my days in university--and that my reaction to this recollection had shaken me.

Thereafter, I was resolved. I had allowed myself to be buried by those things I do not disclose. But I can recall that a perfect feeling can exist inside the most stressful or unwanted moments. The goal is to pursue that perfection in each experience, and not to become unnerved when the things of life interfere. Interference, of course, is never external, it is always originating from within.