......................................................................................................................................................... Clothed in seaweed and smelling of salty kelp, Poseidon rises from the sea's black depths and storms ashore, trampling our illusion of technological solutions. "One of the most fundamental differences between the alchemist stirring his foul-smelling witches' brew and the early chemist at work in his clean and orderly laboratory was the alchemist's conviction that the imaginatio participated directly in the opus, transforming the vaporous spirits steaming from the bubbling sludge into myriad true images." [R. Severson, "The Alchemy of Dreamwork: Reflections on Freud and the Alchemical Tradition." [Dragonflies, Spring 1999.] I sit on a railroad tie adzed into a long bench, the tracks not far away. Succulents crowd the ground on three sides. The sand at my feet is etched from rubberized soles: spirals, swirls, checkered, and wavy lines, working within time and space. It is said that inspiration seized Knut Hamsun, "so powerfully in the meadow that he had to write a poem on the handle of the scythe." The best designs which with to grip the earth are entoptic symbols derived from neurological patterns of the human brain. Behind me, hundreds of the RVs have mysteriously disappeared. Called to somewhere else, their motors were shocked alive in the dead of night, metallic homes forming a train leaving behind cold blackened barbecue pits and empty aprons of rental concrete. When Earth can no longer sustain our opulent ways, the old gods will return, symptomatic of the faith that binds our beliefs to manufactured states of mind. ......................................................................................................................................................... so powerfully in the meadow: Hamsun. DVD. First Run Features, 20