This, I suppose, is part of being human, learning from our losses how better to appreciate what is left in their wake.

Do you want the truth or fiction?

You remember it your way and I'll remember it mine.

I don't, when I think of a city, think of these people, people with very little who are content with that. That is, I think about poverty and culture and traffic and pollution and crime...

Many cultures accept the faulty nature of memory. They know even the photograph only gets it halfway right. They believe there is only one way to bring the dead back to life, story.

If I drag it up from the bottom of the river, if I dig deep into that muddy floor and pull it up, even if I get most of it wrong, is it mine to tell?

There are televisions and radios and the sounds of life, but too there is the sound of death, crying and oxygen tanks, and the squeaky wheels on wheelchairs. Like life and death are in a very close proximity to one another.