The cross on my forehead smeared to simple ashes through the evening. The next morning I read Oliver Sacks’ beautiful piece about learning he has terminal cancer, published in the New York Times:

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

And to dust you will return.

February 18, 2015