Twenty miles away, in the colderwater of the Atlantic, you gaze longinglytoward the coast. Didn't you once love someonethere? Yes, but it was only a cat, and I,a manatee, what could I do? There are no rewardsin this world for pissing your life away, evenif it means you get to see forgotten icebergsof decades ago peeling off from the massto dive under the surface, raising amountain of seething glass before they lunge back upto start the unknown perilous journeyto the desolate horizon.That was the wayI thought of each day when I was young, a sloughing-off,both suicidal and imbued with a certain ritual grace.Later, there were so many protagonistsone got quite lost, as in a forest of doppelgangers.Many things were going on. And the moon, poisedon the ridge like an enormous, smooth grapefruit, understoodthe importance of each and wasn't goingto make one's task any easier, though we loved her.