Pretty soon the road banked to the right, and the next thing I knew we were driving along a breakwall, and beyond that the Gulf of Mexico stretched choppy and blue to infinity. I gazed out over the water and felt my body lose tension, something that happened whenever I fell witness to a vanishing point. I asked Art why he thought this was so and of course he had an answer.
"Fear of death," he said without blinking. "It disappears. When you look out over water, and you feel like you can see forever, the mind starts thinking maybe some things really can last forever. That maybe some things really are eternal. Once the mind figures that out, it's only natural it starts suspecting maybe the thing that makes us us is also a thing that has the potential for everlife. And once the mind figures that out, well. It's not long before it realizes it's been doing a whole lot of worrying for nothin'."
..."The only trick is holding on to that feeling when you're not looking out over an ocean or an undisturbed stretch of flatland."
-from The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough
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