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"All the big things hurt, the things you remember. If it doesn't hurt it's not important."

The past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.

And you know someone's special when you never get enough of them.

Honestly, sometimes you'd rather be a dog. A mutt doesn't torture itself with thinking.

Nanna was the first dead person I ever saw. Her hair was blue against the pillow. And when me hand bumped her cheek she was cold and heavy and a kind of spark went through me, like a terrible familiar feeling. And I understood it then. She was meat. That's what dead things are.

I shoulda been making proper plans to go right then. But I wasn't. You ever seen a chased rabbit give in running? When he just pulls up and stands there? Like he's out of puff and out of ideas and can't put two moves together anymore? Well that was me. I shoulda been gone already. It was like I was paralysed.

Thing is, I'm not the surrendering type. Anyway I'm looking up and down that track. It was the highway or the wildywoods. That was the decision. Between something that's real and something you hope is real. I was banking everything on this call and maybe I wasn't fully right in the head by then but I went east. Roll the dice, that's me.

"Our stories. We store them where moth and rust destroy. We're precious about them, no? Not because we treasure them at all, but because it's safer to hold them close. Am I reading you right? Do we have that much in common?"

"Sometimes it's a mighty struggle to know what's real and what's just . . . a mirage. You understand?"

"Yeah," I said.

Mum said school mighta been different for me if I only give a damn. Maybe it was wasted on me like the teachers said. I didn't have any philosophy in me then, so I didn't know what to listen for. Most of it was pointless crap. Don't reckon I met a single wise person all the years I stayed but like I say, I wasn't paying close attention. And the thing is I miss it a bit. That's something I never thought I'd hear myself say. I didn't know what I was, what I could do. Except the lame things I did do.

"I suspect that God is what you do, not what or who you believe in. When you do right, Jaxie, when you make good - well, then you are an instrument of God. Then you are joined to the divine, to the life force, to life itself. That's what I believe. That's what I hope for. And it's what I have missed. Think of it this way. When somebody does me a kindness, it enlarges me, adds to my life, you see? And not only mine - it adds to all life."

I knew I'd failed a test whose rules I didn't yet understand.