Animals aren’t afraid the way we are. They don’t imagine danger. If danger comes, an animal becomes more alive, using its stored-up more-animal-self reserves. If the danger is fatal, it becomes the most alive it’s ever been, using up its entire being in those last moments. 

All the states of being alive rush to the surface from the center, singing what it practiced its whole life without effort. The center holds, the surface crushed. Then the center is crushed. All is whole as in a black hole—a maw, a jaw, a gullet steaming with pulsing meat.

A self, sliding down the tunnel of another, is extravagantly natural—a kind of rebirth. An inner life like the one who memorizes a soliloquy and in herself sports the mind and carries the voice of the playwright long dead.