This morning I clearly see the mountain usually obscured by the idea of the monstrous—the refusal to remain wedded to an image of the human as final and all-encompassing description---is an affirmation of the possibility of the new, of our no longer being clouds or pollutants, as my "glacial eye" closes the distance between us.

I trip on a string of words. Hitting my head, I remember Allen Ginsberg always had a notepad and a hedgerow of pens in his shirt pocket. He didn't want to miss—Language, language / Ezra Pound the Chinese Written Character for truth / defined as man standing by his word—a potential poem. Language! language! poetry written in the shadow of a tree.

If we must give everything a name, I wish we would cyclically rename the flowers, grasses, trees, birds in flight, animals and stones, beings and non-beings, particles, and planets too. With each round, whatever the means—sacred bones, rattles, bells or voices—it is almost as if man is trying to catch the ear of God, to make God listen. But it is the two most proselytistic religions, Christianity and Islam, that have shown the greatest desire to increase the sound output of their acoustic signals, enforcing the idea that a new mythology would spring up; and old beliefs, with their worn-out words for the Unnamable, would be preserved on a disk, primarily for the interest of scholars of Comparative Religion.

Mountains and buildings would be treated with the same respect. "What's the address of that mountain again?" "Does that building have an elevator, or crumbling Mayan steps?"

"Here, as at Machu Picchu there is the awareness of a link between civilizations, a link that is fundamentally human, and it is the awareness that comets, largely made of ice, 'carry bacterial life across galaxies and protect it from radiation damage along the way...It is now universally accepted that space contains the "ingredients" of life. This development could be the first hint of a huge paradigm shift. But mainstream science has not accepted the hard core of modern panspermia, that whether we are dealing with Tikal or our world, we are confronted with the sense of 'a continuing present,' something which does not depend on units of time, or measurement of any sort, to be realized."

"Coming back on the public bus, I noticed Moose signs in residential areas. Moose crossings in the city? I guess so. They do roam in areas along the coastal trail where we were going to bike. But in the city????"

Even as a child I saw the elderly as more important to the future of the species than the children, as each child must learn what adults already know. Biologically, environmental problems are very pressing and all environmental professionals ought to at least be able to make some kind of contribution to solutions now. It took centuries of argument to come to the conclusion that children are the future, but only if adults give them one.

There is a female presence standing next to me who i sense is a ghost-hunter. In front of us is a doorway in which ripples a curtain of colored lights. She runs to the lights and wrestles them to the floor of a room beyond the doorway. i am where she and the lights were a moment ago. A man is standing nearby, looking down at me. He is slim and has a mock-friendly smile on his face, and small hat worn at an insolent angle.

I awake shivering as if I'd been in the presence of Death, recognized only by the uncanniness of its disguise. It's what peeks through the familiar facade that frightens me. This time, it was the angle of the hat that tipped me off.

One reaches the point where everything is experienced just as it is. Of course there is still creativity, which means taking one's self seriously.

One more time—the museums, old friends. But the past is a meal already digested. The poem I long for, the voice, the rhythm of a foreign sound—a singular gift that doesn't return.

Resurrection doesn't conquering death,
but carrying death forth like a torch,
lighting every thing with its shadow.

Nobody gets
to be a cow-
boy forever.

Mushrooms grow on trees as if they belong. Hairy moss,                                   tickly insects,                                                                strangling vines,                                         woodpecker surgeons...death was cultivated watered like a plant. There was no need for whispering or mime. Let the hubbub drive the devils out, they’ll tell themselves. Let’s make a row. Let’s shout: Trees take everything in stride!

(Michel) Serres argues that the term "parasite" has three meanings. Firstly, in French (and in Greek too) the parasite is someone who eats at the table of another without being invited. Secondly, if one draws the term from parasitology, the parasite can be a microbe, a single cell organism or even an insect that feeds on a host. Finally, the third meaning has to do with the notion of Sacred Noise passed into the hands of new custodians. Then it was the turn of factory owners to establish their social authority by deafening society. It is only after the diminution of its power as a social force that the Sacred Noise becomes static on the line; that is, noise within communication.

Waiting for a bus, leaves swept to the curbside, trees standing like sentinels to either side of the wooden bench. People drive as if locked in sarcophagi remind me of the Navajo who was buried in his pickup truck. "He loved that truck," his wife solemnly said.

Keeping my breath close to me, I climb the mossy sleeves of stone steps, either side tangled with vines. Religious people climb similar steps on knees bleeding from faith in ambivalent events. Here, vagrant newsprint stretches out with drained bottles of wine, with acorns looking for a place to nest.

By the Stone House:

I think: Too bad dogs can't read signs! "That's what we got humans for," a gravely voice growls from beneath a heap of blankets in a dark corner. I think: For someone out of place, you're perfectly placed.

Why have I stopped by lengths of pavement whose veins meander like the walls of Paleolithic caves? How many civilizations have risen to disappear? More blue plums fallen and smashed today against flat blue-gray stones. Thinking we're different spawns the illusion of an ultimate purpose.

A friend tells me he plans to cut down the
unruly tree in his front yard and plant one
that is better behaved.

Autumn's first day, the air crisp as a rifle's retort. Walking into the kitchen this morning I suddenly realized that I was walking into the kitchen!

Jungian analyst and ex-Episcopal priest, Pittman McGehee: "If for a moment I believed in an anthropomorphic God, which I don't, and I died and went to Heaven, God would greet me at the entrance and say: Pittman, you missed the point!"

Each moment we recreate the illusion of a self again, so quickly we don't notice. I write who I am into being.

I am beginning to see
that where I am is where
I am not able to be.

I am seated in a large audience. My name is called. I walk to the stage, shaking hands along the way. At the podium, looking into a mass of blurry faces, I say: "A minute ago I was one of you. Now I'm up here, facing you. In a few minutes, I will take my seat again. But even when one of us steps forth, we are still a part of each other."

Leaves         are first

What would a tree say? I am not a tree,

to redden,    first to be     cast away

but I am rooted to this fault.