and then i am back from the mountains, back from the reflection of things in the shape of others. the earth is a jagged thing it seems, with steam rising from it. we have been climbing, we can feel it in our knees, in the new sound of clicking in them, in their little restless twitching. and i lay my flattened palm on the blackness of this place, and it is hot beneath me, the earth is a hot thing. it is breathing down there, i know it. it is a little living space, not a dead one, and it has a wildness. and i think i see the height of things, the way long roads are stretching, the way there is no end to them. and i think i will learn not to settle. and, in that, i am unsettled and searching both, i am the potential for breath not yet drawn. i have so little time until i need to be at the airport, so my bags are at my feet, so my legs are crossing. i have so little time left in this place, and so much left in the others. and, today, i am the sound the earth makes when the sun rises pink against the sky, and then when it sets again. i am the sound that ten million little people make as they lift up feet, set them down again. and i am laughing there people, under their toes, laughing at the little delicateness of it. because this is a place i have been in for four days, this is a place i am leaving already. and that is the perseptive of things.