Every day, at least once a day, I am struck by this immense feeling of dread, that my head is locked in the guillotine, so to speak . . . I’ll be doing whatever it is I do, and suddenly a black streak of terror will shoot down my spine, and I’m sure the blade is coming down. And yet it does not fall. Even still, the feeling remains . . . lives inside me! and I cannot be rid of it. Maybe everyone feels that feeling whether they realize it not. Maybe for some reason I am just sensitive to it.

Thing is, the terror only lasts for a split second, if that . . . and then I feel a sort of whole-body acceptance of it. I wouldn’t call it passivity so much as letting go of what I do not have control over. Perhaps when you can do that you are walking the lighted path. After all, I had no choice in my being here . . . and I only have so much control over my staying. I’m not afraid to die, though I don’t want to yet . . . What’s there to worry about, other than the end of all things? And even then. I wonder. I wonder too what it is I’m even talking about now . . . I’m so tired . . .

It is midnight in Seattle and I only have three hours left with the cats. I’m so sad about it I almost feel sick. I love them! I of course had not forgotten how life-affirming being in the presence of cats can be, but I have felt it deeply the last two weeks I have been with them. And now I have to go again. Hopefully I’ll be back again with them sooner than later.

Till then . . .