The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever. - John Updike

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do — they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.

Like Ronnie said, we're alone. All we have is family, for what it's worth.