July 19, 2005 .....from a letter to MBR.......... THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM and THE KINGDOM OF THE ANTS ............Yin and Yang ....The Deceptions of Appearances

I have just returned from a calm and introspective retreat at the mountain house, where the space and time for clear sight was presented as a reward for a short drive through ever familiar  winding  forests and rivers--to a place of Reis' and  my own device.  After illuminating the cabin by destroying the remnants of spiders' work and redirecting the paths of large, bi colored ants indigenous to the immediate perimeter of the stone foundation, I felt that order had been re-established within the microcosm there.  Of course, within hours, nature had supplanted my emerging Bambi-vision of the peaceable kingdom as the ants returned to scale the hairs of my legs and the spiders, having moved their webs to my bedding, reminded me that they, like the wind and the waves, will do as they please--regardless of my efforts to share a space with them--a space that, after all, they had lived and bred in for countless generations, each lived with the most subtle and unthinking  variation.  Frustrated, I crushed a black widow beneath the rubber of  a spider-decorated flip-flop and wept at my inability to communicate a more collaborative state of existence between us.  Maybe I acted from fear, an emotion that wise men meditate upon,  rendering it  evanescent and thereby enabling Bambi-world.  Then I remembered what a rough life Bambi had before emerging on the great mountain rock cliff  in charge of his life and destiny.

I do not think that it is in your best interest that I present maps of the garden of the forking paths. They are maps that I have located in my own travels.  And it is these maps that have pre-determined my future travels.   The  HANDCUFF  sign, as provocative as it is, leads to shallow water and steep hills.  The

CASHMERE GLOVE  sign, seemingly soft and gentle, leads to the land of   the Sybarites who cannot be trusted for good advice.   Walk a little further until you see the sign of the OPEN HAND,  exercising caution that you do not mistake  the crossroad sign,  THE GAUNTLET,  for it.  Only one is bare and plain, the other--jeweled and precious. Without vision, things are not what they seem.