I do not know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it dif… - Pat Conroy

There were these deep, serious thoughts I sometimes had to drive from my head like flocks of pesky starlings. I was too pragmatic and impatient to let such thoughts flog me into impotence, yet I sincerely needed a working philosophy on which to hang my hat. After the Halloween trip, one began to form and crystallize without my knowledge, and when I finally acknowledged its presence, it was already a part of me: simply, that life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.

I've never had anybody's approval, so I've learned to live without it.

The tide was a poem that only time could create, and I watched it stream and brim and makes its steady dash homeward, to the ocean.