Sublime

Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end.

ebullience

handsome in a generic way—wore

And so before the summer was over, we gave up. The kids were too busy indulging their new selves and quit playing make-believe out in the woods. And Gretchen and I were lost in our private worlds of self-disgust and conjugal disharmony. By Christmas we’d forgotten about the portal, and the clearing began to fill in. We did what people do: we heaved

obsidian gloss

Unburdened and unhurried, caught up in the simple joy of walking in exotic country, I fell into a kind of trance—but the euphoria seldom lasted for long.

harangued

There was the yeasty smell of wet men.

It’s not for nothing that Kafka spoke of literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”