February Tenth

MAN is an animal that has to do something about his ephemerality.
He wants to overcome and be able to say, "You see, I've made a contribution to life. I've advanced life, I've beaten death, I've made the world pure."
But this creates an illusion. The dynamic of evil is the attempt to make the world other than it is, to make it what it cannot be, a place free from accident, a place free from impurity, a place free from death.

-- ERNEST BECKER
photo of Nancy Hanks Lincoln's grave, 1952, by Ralph Crane