I sincerely hope that no one who truly and intensely needs help believes this is the best and final stop. The last thing I look for in Tennis's column is wisdom. The column is billed as "advice," but most often the Tennis response is a self-referential ode: his experiences, his past, his opinions. Good advice comes from awareness of the world. Tennis rarely peeks beyond himself. So why do I read?

It's Theatre. The LWs are pleased with themselves. Tennis is pleased with himself. The LttE's section is full of people who know the answers. Yet, ultimately, within the fell of vitriol and exhibition, lies the steady pulse of a readership that is willing to wade in and help one of its own.

Salon's readers include some of the most genuine and generous writers on line. Sure, the rancorous bickering self-parodies get tiresome. Still, I'm consistently knocked on my virtual ass by the range of depth and candor offered to the LWs. I begin with the Tennis column to be introduced to the topic, and the spectacle has begun: the second act players enter and write their own dialogue. The wits, the therapists, the self-disclosers, the haters of [women/men/victims/lawyers...]; all the readers who take a few moments from their lives to empathize, to consider, to contribute. Whether the play ends with closure or not, the cast has been inspiring. It often gives me hope, and always fills me with gratitude.

I keep falling into the lacunae: Why, after years of fanatically intense desire for motherhood, Irene emotionally abandons her daughter.

How does this emotional distance coexist with hypervigilance, and when does it metamorphose into something fractious and furious.

How hate evolves might not interest the author, but omitting it makes the rest of the story incomprehensible. Could this be related to their physical disparities - what did the invisible and guardian angelic dead dad look like - it is possible he was not the biological father after all.

Why, if Dani & her husband thought of breeding only as an abstraction, had they historically been so consistent with birth control. Doesn't that imply some awareness of conception as more than conceptual?

And on and on, even unto the final sentence. Sure, it's a knockout line, but why? Multiple choice question:

(a) Dani is sad because her mother is dying.

(b) Dani is sad because she is mourning her mother's belated debut as an existentialist.

(c) Dani is sad because she is ordinary.

(d) Dani is mourning the lost future with her mother.

(e) Dani realizes that the perfect moment is not enough and will never be enough, and in that moment, recognizes that she is and has always been her mother.

It is difficult to bond emotionally with an author who keeps her reader at a distance. No SAT question based on her essay could possibly be answered accurately, except perhaps

Q. Irene : Dani as Dani: _________

A. (reader)

Reading these posts is a great example of how quickly and scrupulously people line themselves up into an Us vs. Them mentality. People who will see this movie and those who won't vying for the moral high ground; people who believe the official legend of 9/11 ridiculing people who know we've been hoodwinked.

Now bear in mind, this is from a group of people homogeneous enough to be subscribing online to Salon. In English. On Tuesday evening. Morality turns into hostility, mockery becomes scorn and contempt. Now add some xenophobia, and drench this all in way, omigod! WAY too much religious saturation, and suddenly, it is good to kill the foreign devils. We are right, whoever we are. They are merely fodder for our righteous anger. Let us launch our vendetta.

It seems that for as high up on the food chain as we've climbed, we're idiots. And why isn't there some field of science as well funded and researched as, say, astronomy or genome sequencing, devoted to the nature of competition among humans: why we can't write a simple letter without wrangling with previous notes, or walk down a dark street without fearing for our lives? Why we don't recognize murder and treachery for the tragedy it is, and mourn, rather than exploiting our losses as a series of self-aggrandizing opportunities?

We are so damned ready to fight and kill and shout hurrah. I weep for us all.