He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do. - Dan Simmons

Life is brutal that way...the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction.

What was the Depression?
Bad economic times in their pure capitalist nation-state, Aenea said. Remember, the economy wasn't really global then, and it depended upon private money institutions called banks, gold reserves, and the value of physical money—actual coins and pieces of paper that were supposed to be worth something. It was all a consensual hallucination, of course, and in the 1930s, the hallucination turned nightmare.

I realized that for this moment, nothing in the past mattered. Nothing terrible in the future mattered. What mattered was her skin against me, her hand holding me, the perfume of her hair and skin and the warmth of her breath against my chest. This was satori. This was truth.