In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury writes, “Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?” Well, the final passage of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Scottish empiricist David Hume makes his targets abundantly clear.

What is the ideal language of death?

A writing sample excerpted from my 20,000-word honors literature thesis: “The Voices Awakened on the Rocks”: An Explication of Polyphony & Peculiar Consciousness in Georg Büchner’s Lenz.

“A human being is such an abyss,” Saint Augustine of Hippo writes, addressing his creator in his Confessions. The word abyss is a Greek compound of the prefix a-, meaning without, and -byssos, bottom. In Genesis 1:2, the Abyss refers to a deep watery chaos in a state of uncreation: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth – and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping through over the waters.” Over this primordial ocean, God brings order by way of light, sky, and land: “Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good. God then separated the light from the darkness.”

Picture a beach. Millions(billions?endless?) hot grains of sand building a soft yet coarse rug undulating underfoot, so thin it squeaks with each step. This rug leads us to the wonderfully cold green blue water with waves laying themselves ceaselessly onto the sand, worshiping. Behind is the verdant lush of the rainforest hills we hiked over to get here. All around, small children in colorful bathing suits making sand castles.

One of them looks up from their grainy blond kingdoms and asks you, “where does the sand castle end?”

Snow, Bean boots, and emails. What do these things have in common?