If There Is Magic On This Planet,

It Has Been Said That Great Art Is The Night Thought Of Man. It May Emerge Without Warning From The Soundless Depths Of The Unconscious, Just As Supernovas May Blaze Up Suddenly In The Farther Reaches Of Void Space.

Every Time We Walk Along A Beach Some Ancient Urge Disturbs Us So That We Find Ourselves Shedding Shoes And Garments Or Scavenging Among Seaweed And Whitened Timbers Like The Homesick Refugees Of A Long War... Mostly The Animals Understand Their Roles, But Man, By Comparison, Seems Troubled By A Message That, It Is Often Said, He Cannot Quite Remember Or Has Gotten Wrong... Bereft Of Instinct, He Must Search Continually For Meanings... Man Was A Reader Before He Became A Writer, A Reader Of What Coleridge Once Called The Mighty Alphabet Of The Universe.

A Man Who Has Once Looked With The Archaeological Eye Will Never See Quite Normally. He Will Be Wounded By What Other Men Call Trifles. It Is Possible To Refine The Sense Of Time Until An Old Shoe In The Bunch Grass Or A Pile Of Nineteenth Century Beer Bottles In An Abandoned Mining Town Tolls In One's Head Like A Hall Clock.

Fire, As We Have Learned To Our Cost, Has An Insatiable Hunger To Be Fed. It Is A Nonliving Force That Can Even Locomote Itself.

It Is Frequently The Tragedy Of The Great Artist, As It Is Of The Great Scientist, That He Frightens The Ordinary Man.