Composed of Eros and of dust...

Once, I looked out of the back window of a minivan and believed that I could clamber out onto the clouds in the sky above, and that when I got there they would be great soft mountains and I could explore the hundreds of shining caves. I thought if I looked long enough, I would find God there.

Once, my sister and I picked dozens of red berries that stained our fingers, and used them to decorate a scrawny, four-foot pine tree in our neighbor's back woods. The pine tree had only two branches, each on opposite sides like arms reaching slightly forward. We hung berries on each of his green needle fingers. It was Christmas time. I imagine snow everywhere, but I'm not sure if that is only my imagination enhancing the memory. I know that we named the tree "Little Pine." (We were very creative children.) We used to visit him often, he seemed so lonely standing in the middle of the path, a small citizen in a tall world. That winter became fiercely cold, and Michigan suffered from several ice storms that shattered many pipes and caused a great number of power-outages. The spring that followed, Hannah and I wandered back through those woods to visit Little Pine and noticed that his fingers weren't green anymore and the sap had run dry beneath his skin. Winter had robbed him early of life. We both cried a little then.

Once, the song Pavane, by Gabriel Faure, changed me forever.

(Listen to it laid out on your living room floor with your eyes closed. If you are unable to lie down, or if your living room floor is a primary walkway in your house, then feel free to ignore this stipulation. However, eyes closed is imperative.)

Once, I sat in a hammock next to the person I love and pretended to be in the Amazon rainforest. For all the birds and all the green leaves swirling overhead and the warm smell of rain, it may as well have been. I felt delight when he said it might as well have been, too.

Once, I read these words for the first time: "Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me." For the first time, I thought: Yes.

(I spent the rest of that reading -- The History of Love -- thinking Yes, again and again.)

Once, my great-grandfather died. At his funeral, I couldn't get the smell of Tootsie Rolls from my senses.

One night, I looked out from the window of a loft where I was preparing to sleep. I stared out over the fields and fences and thought a soft white fog had lowered over everything on the earth. But the trees had dark islands beneath them where the fog left an untouched circle. I understood: the soft white fog became moonlight. I leaned my face against the cool glass and watched the full moon drench the world, looked down and watched the shadows spread. I laid my head on the pillow and slept.

I find all of these things to be beautiful. Like the deep blues and glowing yellows of van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, the memories of these flicker inside my heart in varying colors of pain and joy. Hannah and I drove to Houston from Baton Rouge today -- five hours -- and we talked about this ... "aesthetic sense," for lack of a better term: this sense that fills all of us at certain moments. Moments we can't predict or pattern, but that rumble inside of our souls when they come and leave us in hushed and reverent wonder. They serve to "keep us out of the set ways of life," as Hannah read to me from A Severe Mercy. They remind us of the terrible beauty of being alive.

These are some of mine.