......................................................................................................................................................... With anonymous green plants blossoming on the trail, I dance past the shiny red leaves of Poison Oak, to a sparkling ocean lifted by the moon and skimmed by a scoop of sharp-eyed pelicans. Bobbing surfers in black rubberwear paddle out. Pushed back, they persist forward, to where waves rise and curl over a sun flaring in a straight line to visions bursting behind my eyes. After sliding down a muddy embankment to a road, I realize I have a poisonous snake slung over my right shoulder. It grabs the cuff of my jacket in its jaws. I try to release its poison by squeezing its jaws, but this doesn’t work. Then I think, 'I must cut off its head,' Some idealized myths: the noble horse, virile bull, and the tree that embraces "the very heart of earth, where hell and the kingdom of giants are to be found." "Yggdrasill, with its roots in the earth and its branches in Heaven; the first life came from that tree, and at the end of the world the last couple will be buried in Yggdrasill; human life begins and ends in the tree." [C.G. Jung, "Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1929-1930."] A pollard tree, deracinated by scholars, the myths remain alive: rising from axon hillocks, circulating through dendritic trees, leaping the void of synaptic chasms, the newest stories are dreamed through ventricles to the oldest tales. This is a necessary vision if we are to affirm a progressive world within a natural, familiar environment. The self, cut loose from its attachments, must discover meaning where it may—a predicament, evoked at its most nihilistic, that underlies both surrealism and the circular growth of cultural reforms. ......................................................................................................................................................... the very heart of earth: M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion. New York, 1971 a natural, familiar environment: J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, MA, 1988.