'Hard by a great forest lived a poor woodcutter who had come upon such hard times that he could no longer provide even daily bread for his wife and two children. How are you supposed to fall asleep to this? Here is a story, not of good and evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.

Here is a story where everything goes wrong, here is a story where everyone has their back against the wall, here is a story where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don't, they'll die. Imagine that the world is made out of love. The window is over my bed and there are three trees outside the window, in the yard, the dark woods, well-framed and moving slowly in the breeze. This is still the beginning, this is my bedtime, early on. I would discover that my father could speak German but refused to, was ashamed to - We're Americans now - but that was later. Grandma had stories about the war - running, hiding, privation - but that was later. Things got bad, sure, but that was later. 'I was a regular-style kid with a regular-style life. Sometimes you need a map to find the food, the hiding places. We do not walk through a passive landscape. Except that isn't true now, is it? Fact is, the world is full of things trying to kill you. The world is full of things already, the world is vast and wide and full of grace, and you will always be given the benefit of the doubt. Wouldn't that be great? Just don't make anything. 'Why make a map? Why do anything at all? Now how, because hows are easy, series or sequence, one foot after another, but existentially why bother, what does it solve? Well, if you don't need to, don't. From 'Hansel,' a remarkable essay by poet Richard Siken, which begins like this:

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