[Subject line from William Carlos Williams's "Slow Movement," which Joanne quoted last week.]

Erica Jong in today's NYT Book Review:

How does an atheist prepare for death? This is a theme Diana Athill explores in Somewhere Towards the End. Her grapplings are impressive: "My own belief - that we, on our short-lived planet, are part of a universe simultaneously . . . ordinary . . . and incalculably mysterious . . . - does not feel like believing in nothing and would never make me recruit anyone for slaughter. It feels like a state of infinite possibility, stimulating and enjoyable - not exactly comforting, but acceptable because true."

...
"I have heard people bewailing man's landing on the moon, as though before it was touched by an astronaut's foot it was made of silver or mother-of-pearl, and that footprint turned it into gray dust. But the moon never was made of mother-of-pearl, and it still shines as if it were so made."