You sit there in the rain and realize how beautiful it is.
You sit there in your seat and the world turns.
You sit there at your desk and life rolls at your feet.
You sit there in the moment and hear, first, the clock ticking, then a chicken clucking outside the window, then your stomach growls as gas bubbles through a valve.
You sit there in the moment and see the fresh green of new growth and hear the laughter of children playing in the school yard.
Nine times out of ten everything is okay. Ninety-nine out of a hundred. The odds are on our side and when things do go wrong they do it on a spectrum of from bad to worse, from irritation to horror.
It’s not always immediately horror, is what I’m saying.
In a world constructed such as this one is, one ought to have a lot of trust.

I jump into the deep water although I cannot swim, because you will save me.

Jump and a dragon will appear.

Imagine, however, a pervasive and omnipresent technology dedicated to skewing people’s perception of the probability of horror. Fear, for I am with you. In Japan, a boy brought his mother’s head (in a bag) to a police station (after spending a few hours in an internet cafe with it first) saying war and terrorism should stop and it didn’t matter who he killed. See how the technology feeds on itself?

It is said by some that there have been societies so afraid they worshipped evil. Perhaps there have been others so trusting they worshipped good. Neither seems to have been viable.

You sit on the terrace under the tent, or as it said on the box, the garden pavillion, with your father-in-law in a thunderstorm. The frame is heavy metal and not grounded. Neither one of you says much.

You sit under the tent at night with your wife, drinking tea and listening for hedgehogs in the bushes.