.

Om! If ever there was magic . . .

So let's include aggies -- remember? . . . ?

OK, Pokemon Go? Or just sit cross legged and pretty soon dark matter will outrun SETI, skipping over a black hole to the other end of China. What is . . .

It's not religious, politically ism oriented, and definitely not on the agenda for City Council or the School Board. But all of the above, and just shows that people, dogs, dolphins and ants like to huddle. Safety in delusions and droves. What is existence?

Oh, heavy now! For the educated, let's refer at least to Bardology – Shakespeare, Krishna, King, maybe Aristotle and Homer, to spin the eclectic culture machine – or the Beatles, Miles, and miles of ticker tape nostalgia.

At the very least, life is doves and snails and a small gathering of ceramic peasants. The family farm has ossified. Artificial Intelligence will bury SETI and greet our first interstellar visitors: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true! Yee Ha! The universe shakes like a bowl of jelly.

But please don't burden with a repetition of early morning circus tents, the thwack of hammers setting stakes. It's really just a lot of hard work in those chilly hours before dawn. Or weigh it down with halo tales of J.P. Morgan and elephants and speculations how the damn tents got there in the first place.

Let us not argue about small things.

Existence, I say, is just a word. It's bacon and eggs, and the now vaunted sealing wax long forgotten but still floating around in archetypes and the fantasies of everyone. Though of course the tropes might form poison arrows or digging sticks or transistors. Who is there that arrives at the Station naked?

I was employed by Bruce Joyce, a Stanford professor, to maintain his Eichler home in Palo Alto, the scene of a little fringe Om! with which I was associated. We were Zen, if you please.

The main fun at the Eichler was Rufus, Bruce's golden retriever with a sense of humor. Who found ingenious ways to escape the yard despite my best efforts to contain him. He would always win and jump with laughter when caught. Next best was pruning the persimmon trees in the back, which wasn't landscaped. The fruit is so elegant, oriental.

Though I never learned what Bruce taught, or even if he did, he was brilliant in conversation. One afternoon, work done and a glass of white wine, we were discussing the need for persimmons, and his wild area. I mused what is . . .

Then the conversation ended. Rufus had escaped again. . .