I am again facing anxiety. I know why this darkness threatens. My closest friend, only four or five months younger than I, again has cancer in another part of his body, one of his doctors mentioning hospice. It has thrown him and me for a loop. No, I don’t have cancer that I know of, but I am closer to death than I have ever been. I guess we can all say that. But here I am in the same river with him, sometimes buoyed but sometimes threatened to be taken down by the undertow. Writing is a facet of the diamond of my salvation. And this whole situation has brought home how we are all part of the same Reality in a Universe full of darkness and stars.