the luminous outset became the interminable middle

The United States, the rising world power (...), seemed the least harmonious culture of all. He could already sense that what would triumph in the world was a civilization---rigid, formidably efficient, spiritually demented, militaristic, and mercantile---which had extracted analogies to the Universe from two thousand years of thought, in order to select those laws that would prove useful for making nature subservient, and for serving Progress.

I am beginning
once more to rise into the shape
of someone I can be

-Philip Levine

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always gets where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through a obstacle, go around it. Water does.