They hang onto all these kinds of thing, and insist that only what offers contact and touch is a thing that is.

It may be that the realistic story is commonplace, but so is life, and the realistic tale is true.

It was the odor of slop and mud and hogshit so layered by time that it seeped out of the ground and grass and weeds and trees and, it seemed, out of the very brick and mortar of the house.

According to Fraisse (I966), “biogenic motivations," which control adaptive behaviors necessary for survival (psychotropisms, escape phenomena, aggression, etc), are among the most archaic and involve defense mechanisms that implicate a high degree of vigilance (i.e., so-called states of overarousal).