Sometimes I talk to someone and their honesty and simplicity makes me feel guilty--shallow and guilty and too fast--living way too fast and letting anger and aggression along with the speed of my brain--because of the speed of my brain--get the better of me. It's as if I become stoned in the moment of realization, stoned because it hits me fast and makes me incredulous as to my previous mode of thinking, my previous perception--a moment of illumination. This time it happened when Saul told me about his trip to the organic farm, and about the cycles of life and death he'd experienced with the lambs being born, and the pig being slaughtered and buried. His talk about the unawareness of these cycles that we live with day to day in this ever-urbanized life reminded me, as things tend to, of my limited perspective. But it's okay. I am a city dweller at the moment. Mark and I both are. We still know how to love-we still appreciate nature-we still have friends and relatives die on us-maybe not with the frequency that Saul might experience living on a farm, but we experience it. And other things-so many other realities. The realities of many cultures dwelling beside each other, the reality of huge masses of people surviving, or dying, side by side in major natural catastrophes (earthquakes, my newest obsession) strangers dealing w/these things. The perspective is neither broader nor narrower, but different.