And There It Lives

Thelonious Monk: Monk's Dream

There is but one world
and everything
that is imaginable
is necessary to it.
For this world also
which seems to us
a thing of stone
and flower and blood
is not a thing at all
but is a tale.
And all in it is a tale
and each tale the sum
of all lesser tales
and yet these are also
the selfsame tale
and contain as well
all else within them.
So everything is necessary.
Every least thing.
This is the hard lesson.
Nothing can be
dispensed with.

Nothing despised.
Because the seams
are hid from us, you see.
The joinery.
The way in which
the world is made.
We have no way to know
what could be taken away.
What omitted.
We have no way to tell
what might stand
and what might fall.
And those seams
that are hid from us
are of course
in the tale itself
and the tale has no abode
or place of being
except in the telling only
and there it lives
and makes its home
and therefore we can never
be done with the telling.
Of the telling there is no end.
And . . . in whatever . . . place by whatever . . . name or by no name at all . . . all tales are one.
Rightly heard all tales are one.
--Cormac McCarthy
The Crossing

Hopi Pt. from outside Travertine Canyon
inner gorge near Trinity Canyon
between Agate and Sapphire Canyon
Sockdolager Rapid with Zoroaster and Brahma Temple
bonfire by HEAD LIKE AN ORANGE