Life for most of us,most of the time, requires a suspension of the imagination. As I get ready to board a plane to Michigan in the morning, on my way home in a sense, since it is where I first really developed a social context, I am reflecting on the fear of flying. The reflection is dispassionate if a trifle morbid; it is not as though I am going to have any trouble walking onto the plane later in the morning. Flying does bring up the age-old problem of perception of risk, however. Rationally, one recognizes that about the only safer mode of transportation than flying is probably an elevator. However, the prospect of the final moments of agony in an airline accident, praying for death in the moments before one expires, is unendurable. For me, the horror of an incident like 9/11 is not just the fact that so many died, but that so many who in one moment were conducting their ordinary lives in the twin towers were suddenly faced with the stark choice of imminent incineration or taking the plunge to their deaths by sudden impact hundreds of feet below. One need not multiply examples to reinforce the desirability of death's stealing our lives with a kiss in our beds, in good health, at an advanced age. The fact that for so many of us death is a rape not a seduction is not one to be contemplated lightly or often.