PART ONE:

"We do not see things as they are,

We see them as we are"

-Anais Nin

"There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

-T. S. Eliot, from "East Coker"