i hope i don't get mean before i get out. i hope i decide soon if i mean to get out.

there is this scene in "the secret garden" where they're in the still sleeping and forbidden garden, and the spoiled girl and the young gardener are exploring together. she says, but it's all dead, and he says no its not, and he grabs a branch, and cuts below the surface and shows her the green. see, it's wick, he says.

"It's as wick as you or me," he said; and Mary remembered that Martha had told her that "wick" meant "alive" or "lively."

"I'm glad it's wick!" she cried out in her whisper. "I want them all to be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how many wick ones there are."

She quite panted with eagerness, and Dickon was as eager as she was. They went from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Dickon carried his knife in his hand and showed her things which she thought wonderful.

"See here!" and he pulled down a thick gray, dry-looking branch. "A body might think this was dead wood, but I don't believe it is�down to th' root. I'll cut it low down an' see."

He knelt and with his knife cut the lifeless-looking branch through, not far above the earth.

"There!" he said exultantly. "I told thee so. There's green in that wood yet. Look at it."

i think it's very easy to live half-asleep, or not really feeling as vividly as you are able to. i think to really live you have to spend your whole life cutting down to the wick.