The Plan Is Not What

Nothing Grows Among Its Pinnacles; There Is No Shade Except Under Great Toadstools Of Sandstone Whose Bases Have Been Eaten To The Shape Of Wine Glasses By The Wind. Everything Is Flaking, Cracking, Disintegrating, Wearing Away In The Long, Inperceptible Weather Of Time. The Ash Of Ancient Volcanic Outbursts Still Sterilizes Its Soil, And Its Colors In That Waste Are The Colors That Flame In The Lonely Sunsets On Dead Planets.

Mind Is Locked In Matter Like The Spirit Ariel In A Cloven Pine. Like Ariel, Men Struggle To Escape The Drag Of The Matter They Inhabit, Yet It Is The Spirit That They Fear.

This Is The Most Enormous Extension Of Vision Of Which Life Is Capable: The Projection Of Itself Into Other Lives. This Is The Lonely, Magnificent Power Of Humanity. It Is . . . The Supreme Epitome Of The Reaching Out.

I Am Not Nearly So Interested In What Monkey Man Was Derived From As I Am In What Kind Of Monkey He Is To Become.

Of All The Unexpected Qualities Of An Unexpected Universe, The Sheer Organizing Power Of Animal And Plant Metabolism Is One Of The Most Remarkable. . . . Where It Reaches Its Highest Development, In The Human Mind, We Forget It Completely. . . . So Important Does Nature Regard This Unseen Combustion . . . That A Starving Man's Brain Will Be Protected To The Last While His Body Is Steadily Consumed.