Despair Is Easy, Or At

When Someone Doesn't Show Up, The People Who Wait Sometimes Tell Stories About What Might Have Happened And Come To Half Believe The Desertion, The Abduction, The Accident. Worry Is A Way To Pretend That You Have Knowledge Or Control Over What You Don't--and It Surprises Me, Even In Myself, How Much We Prefer Ugly Scenarios To The Pure Unknown. Perhaps Fantasy Is What You Fill Up Maps With Rather Than Saying That They Too Contain The Unknown.

The New Architecture And Urban Design Of Segregation Could Be Called Calvinist: They Reflect A Desire To Live In A World Of Predestination Rather Than Chance, To Strip The World Of Its Wide-open Possibilities And Replace Them With Freedom Of Choice In The Marketplace.

To Write Is To Carve A New Path Through The Terrain Of The Imagination, Or To Point Out New Features On A Familiar Route. To Read Is To Travel Through That Terrain With The Author As A Guide-- A Guide One Might Not Always Agree With Or Trust, But Who Can At Least Be Counted On To Take One Somewhere.

If You Look At A Lot Of Traditional Societies, They're All Organized Along What We Might Call Anarchist Guidelines, But It's Not Like The Zapatistas Were Reading European Social Theory.

Revolution Is A Phase, A Mood, Like Spring, And Just As Spring Has Its Buds And Showers, So Revolution Has Its Ebullience, Its Bravery, Its Hope, And Its Solidarity. Some Of These Things Pass.