Like Lucifer, he creates darkness as he descends. - James Salter

You're so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.

He had his life — it was not worth much — not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage, he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one — we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist.

incandescent afternoons in Spain, the shutters closed, a blade of sun burning into the darkness.