......................................................................................................................................................... Rained all day, low clouds brushing hills into a mottled frieze. Deciduous trees still gripping leaves, soggy ground is shrouded with those that let go. In a recurrent dream of my childhood home there's a steep ramp that leads into a cellar, a circle to which rooms are attached as if to the rim of a wheel. One room contains shards of broken window glass, splintered frames, and other debris scattered on a concrete floor. In another room, mounds of coal that clamored down a chute now quietly wait to be shoveled into the furnace glowing white in the circle's center. "I was in the cellar. I could see nothing except the Hermetic egg which gave off a terrifying light, Silhouetted against the unclouded glass was a tiny black feline animal standing in a human posture. As I looked at it, a kind of horror crept over me. [P. Harpur, Mercurius. Glastonbury, UK, 2008.] There are a few locked rooms, and a collection of rusty baby carriages. Fuse boxes are bolted to a dark wall. With a racing heart I feel my way through plots of pitch blackness. On either side of the building, an elevator that reaches to the roof promises a journey into light, but I can't remember on which floor, and in which apartment, I'm now living. It's as if I died and don't know where my new home is. "For Buddhists and ecologists alike, we are all created from spare parts scavenged from the same cosmic junk-heap, from which ‘our’ component atoms and molecules are on temporary loan, and to which they will eventually be recycled." [D. Barash, Aeon 5, November 2012.]