Around 1000 C.E., Paleo-Eskimos, the so-called Dorset People, were disappearing from Greenland. Out-tooled and out-weaponed by more recent immigrants, perhaps they intermarried into the dominant tribe. At the same time, even in summer, conditions in the Arctic are harsh and unpredictable. All life hangs by a thread, In order to survive, each living creature must mesh together with all the others in mutual dependence. The ecological balance is so delicate, that across the southern Colorado Plateau and the upper Rio Grande drainage, Anasazi civilization was reaching its height. In Chaco Canyon, along a ten-mile stretch of Northwestern New Mexico, stones were lifted and fitted, using mud for mortar to build eleven large pueblos, each with up to 500 rooms, and a spectacular system of roads fanned out from green fields of corn, beans and squash. But by 1300 C.E., snow-fed streams were trickling, wells became vessels of sand, and the sun's brilliant eye was grading the Old Ones into halos of bone-dry air.

Walking into the forest, sitting by the creek, patiently grinding stone against stone, wearing horizons down until when you trace the universe back, everything went wrong about 14 billion years ago. By go wrong, I mean all the laws of physics break down: they give infinities and meaningless results. Einstein himself didn't interpret this as the beginning of time; he just said, there appeared a terrorist with an ancient gaze.

I am snug in a tent of skin stretched over an armature of bones stuffed with muscles and organs supplied with channels of pulsing blood... and a mind that dreams—

Trapped an unidentifiable man against a rail overlooking
a precipice, ordered him to take off his shoes and toss
them into the void, then sent him flying after them.
Awoke thinking: Which part of myself did I kill?