Quote for the Entry: "It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is the bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults growing into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood. Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms, and deep voices in dark saying, 'Tell Papa, tell Mam, and we'll make it right.' The child, screaming for refuge, sense how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, thses parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child's need for exactly that sactuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convienant cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia. Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasosns we cry cry they wouldfling us otu of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our own ferocious appetites. We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting a lollipops or a toy bear's worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reachesw of our skulls for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness." - Katherine Dunn, Geek Love. It's a fantastic book, read it, but I had this big long reason why I chose that quote, but it took such a long friggin time to type it out, I've forgotten.