My youngest daughter, aspiring to be an FBI agent, discovers FBI training teaches its recruits not to believe in coincidences. As a writer, I’ve taught myself the same principal. Understood or not, isn’t the world laced through with meaning?

Leaving my house in the dark early this morning, I tipped my head back and admired the firmament, the moon sunk down over the horizon, the innumerable stars one of my earliest memories. Yet each time I see the stars I have that odd swirl of familiarity and the unknown: always magnificent.

Driving through the country dark, the roads empty of any traffic, a coyote sprints before me, so near I spy its shaggy coat, eyes focused ahead, intent on its course.

Here’s a few lines from Roxanne Gay I read last night, in her memoir about super-obesity.

In the before of my life, I was so very young and sheltered. I knew nothing about anything. I didn’t know I could suffer or the breadth and scope of what suffering could be. I didn’t know that I could give voice to my suffering when I did suffer.

– Roxanna Gay, Hunger