So today I let myself be talked toby one plum-colored weed,dipping on its stalk - a swoonso drunk and delicate, it hurt.

Alone, do you know what it means?

Sometimes I feel my principles blinking outbehind me, like streetlights in a townwhere I had never lived;To which I may never find a way to return.

But down near the bottom of the crossed-out list of things you have to do today,between "green thread" and "broccoli", you findthat you have pencilled "sunlight".

All morning on my five-mile hike, I've crossed these provinces of color,inventing crazy names and throwing them away like paper airplanes from a childs little hand.

The way a volunteer might raise his hand to apply for evolution,even though it meansthe possible extinctionof his former personality.

You think of what you want to say,and you forget, deliberately.Go back to the beginning. Think about it.Take, if you like, all day.

And isn't that the story of the mind? Which started as a little church,with open doors, but wound upas a fortress, with foot-thick wallsand a birstling defense.

And how we come around in timeto lifting up our heads, looking for the kindness that would make revenge unnecessary.