Commonplace Book

'"...We let our children see us drink. Then we let them drink, thinking they will learn how to drink intelligently, but most of them never do. They learn to use drugs and alcohol for props, for courage, for macho, for pain. They use amphetamines for study. In the high-octane lives we prepare them for there may not be a way to withstand the pain except getting high. You can't teach young people to meditate. It's unnatural. So we have this culture and we are killing ourselves and our children with it even when we aren't at war..."'

from Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, a piece in Acts of God by Ellen Gilchrist