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WOODSTOVE TIME

Finally a dust of white upon the mountains beneath their caps of cloud; very late in the year. Mt. Ibuki across the blue mirror of the Lake has been wearing formal white for some time now. As a direct result of all this frosting going on apace all around us, yesterday we started the first fire in our woodstove this year. This is the furthest into the year we've ever gotten without needing a fire in the stove; usually we make it only to latter November, so the weather has let us save almost a month's supply of firewood!! Thank you, large entity!

And let me say right off and unqualifiedly that whiskey barrel staves make excellent firewood, need minimal kindling, burn hot, long and even, stack great, coal excellently, resulting in minimal ash, minimal smoke, minimal creosote and maximum general pleasedness, though a lot of sawing to size, which enables the sawyer to regularly burn off chocolate fuel.

When the ice crystals form on the ground outside and breath turns directly into clouds as crystally fingers creep up the windows and the entire landscape is frozen for the following year, there's nothing quite like the heat from a good woodstove-- ours is a DutchWest large Federal (Vermont Castings) catalytic-- it gives off heat like like the heat you get to your bones when you slip into one of Japan's finest sento (hot-spring bath). Before going to bed on a wintry night, there's nothing quite like stretching out in front of the radiant woodstove and deliciously turning your body into a life-sized bedwarmer. Eat your heart out, central heating.

And wood is replenishable. Lots of expert wood-burning info at Woodheat.org--

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ON BLOGCRITICS.ORG

Just posted this bit of cheek with tongue in it at the superforum Blogcritics, a great site for the eclecticism of opinion we all need in our lives. Be nice of you to please be so kind as to vote for Blogcritics as Best Group Blog...

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I GUESS AMERICANS DON'T MIND PAYING FOR THIS

"Halliburton is charging [the US] $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey."

The ripoff doesn't end there.

[Cheney left Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package when he became the GOP's vice-presidential candidate]

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THE PARADOX OF HEDONISM

As one who has ever tried to honor the divinely bestowed hedonistic aspects of my nature-- morality, safety, occasion and various other yaggeda-yaggeda appropriatenesses allowing-- I yesterday overindulged in a fine batch of chocolate-covered roasted almonds, and later that evening began to pay the premium in the form of a complaining gall bladder with its accompanying gang of niggling sledge-hammery symptoms.

Paradoxically, bodily factors often stand in the way of physical pleasures. So there I was feeling that old aching shoulder, headache and waning appetite, so familiar from the times when I imposed less stringent licensing on my Formula One travels in the fast lane, which upon slowing down in later life (below Ferrari level) I kept well in check by taking 800 units of vitamin e a day, among other things.

This practice however, has become less regular, I recently forgetting sometimes for weeks at a stretch to take my "e"; hence this reaction to the otherwise no-problem chocolate almond divinities. So this morning when I woke up stiff and fuzzy, the nickel dropped and I took my vitamin e. Within an hour, all symptoms had faded away, leaving me pretty much in my former state but with a higher IQ. So I guess it's not really a paradox, so much as a matter of forgetting to be wise...

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IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE (OR THERE)...

"But these statistical figures do not tell the human impact of such a catastrophic collapse of a country's monetary system. In his book, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (1972), Otto Friedrich writes that 'By the middle of 1923, the whole of Germany had become delirious. Whoever had a job got paid every day, usually at noon, and then ran to the nearest store, with a sack full of banknotes, to buy anything that he could get, at any price. In their frenzy, people paid millions and even billions of marks for cuckoo clocks, shoes that didn't fit, anything that could be traded for anything else.' The price of a cup of coffee would double in the time that a customer took to drink it in a cafe.

Food supplies became both an obsession and a currency. The breakdown of the medium of exchange meant that the rural farmers became increasingly reluctant to sell their agricultural goods for worthless paper money in the cities. Urban dwellers streamed back to the countryside to live with relatives in order to have something to eat. Anything and everything was offered and traded directly for food to stave off the pangs of hunger."

From The Great German Inflation by Richard M. Ebeling

CHICHIBU YOMATSURI part III

Because every hotel and inn and ryokan and minshuku within a very large radius was fully booked for the two nights of the festival, Echo and I had booked a room in Nagatoro, about a half-dozen stops away on the old country line railroad. When we'd walked enough (starting when we walked down the mountain early that morning to catch the train), seen all that we could hold and it had gotten night-cold enough that we were looking very forward to a nice warm futon, we set off in the dark that was booming with the flash of fireworks, a multihour climactic demonstration of very big, very loud, very decorative colorblasts in the shapes of flowers, stars, fish, cartoon characters etc., and when with fireworks-divided attention we found the station it was the wrong one so we set out again through the mobs, finally finding the smaller station we were looking for.

After getting old-fashioned, thick cardboard tickets of the kind I haven't seen for 30 years we got in line and went through the wicket as the guy actually took the ticket of each person into his hand and just like in a diorama punched it slowly and efficiently with a puncher and gave it back, every single ticket, one by one! As a result we missed the train, but didn't really mind because we got to watch the fireworks finale from the well-positioned train platform.

Since this was Festival Night, another train came along fairly soon and we got on with the crowd and got seats, though not together, had about 20 minutes to travel without falling asleep, couldn't see out the steamy windows what the stations were in the dark, listened for each announcement, but an anemic announcer with a high voice, a fuzzy mike and worn out speakers amid loud conversations yielded only the occasional wisp of a na (fuzzy interval) or was that a ra (fuzzy interval) maybe a ga (fuzzy interval)did he say ro (fuzzy interval) or was it a ran, randomly audible syllables that as we rocked along reminded me as of all the old railroad announcement jokes I used to hear from my grandfather (a conductor on the New York Central) and his buddies around the kitchen table as I sat here/there in a far-off land smiling from the distant past in a zoned-out dreamlike state in the swaying warmth of the delightful train when suddenly Echo's voice said this is our station as she scrambled through her part of the crowd toward the door nearest her and I did the same toward my door but when I got there it didn't open so I turned and plowed back through the long knotty crowd toward Echo's door, but so few had gotten off that by the time she'd gotten to it her door had closed too and we were on our way once more, further into country darkness.

Needless to say we didn't miss the next stop, whence however it was too far to walk back in too deep a dark without a suitable map, and since we were pretty low on energy we just went into the station as into 60 years ago and asked the formally efficient station attendant, straight out of one of those old Japanese black-and-white movies but in living color, when the next train would be going in the opposite direction, explaining why/complaining that we had missed the train, he said Yes, the new train is too long for some of these old platforms, so the doors at the ends don't open. Thanks for the news, we said.

The next train would be going our way in just a country minute (half an hour), so we spent the next 30 minutes 60 years ago, looking at all the stuff in the station, an edifice built entirely of wood for the much smaller people who lived back then. A long time later, as train time approached we went out and walked across the tracks to the other platform. When you're cold because you're tired because you've been walking and traveling and walking since very early that day and you're standing going nowhere late that night on the dark and windy open platform of a countryside train station whose name you haven't noticed, you might not be aware that you're having one of those great experiences that travel affords: the chance to confront face to face whichever of your weaknesses may even now be gaining strength in you, as when in ice climbing you're hanging from the edge of the frozen waterfall by one hand and you don't let go, you just shift from mind to mind and whistle and converse and shiveringly dredge up warm thoughts to think until at last the train comes along and you're on your way.

We got off at the right station this time since we'd had so much practice, plus it was the next one and the train was empty so we were waiting at the real doors to pounce upon the elusive platform before it could get away again. We then walked through the quiet old station and the quiet empty night village looking for our inn in the dark and finding what maybe looked like it was the one, went inside to find three men and an elderly woman sitting around a warm stove, they were expecting us, that was the place, and from the big cauldron on the stovetop they served us big hot country soup that was a pleasure to hold, first on the outside and then on the inside. Thence to sleep under thick warm covers, I slept like the perfect piece of toast at the very bottom of the deepest point of sleep on the planet...

2bCont'd...

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THE CONTRETEMPS OF HOWARD DEAN

"I seriously doubt that anybody who publicly uses the word "contretemps" can ever be elected president."

---Nicholas D. Kristof

Sad, that this could still be true of America.

CHICHIBU YOMATSURI Part II

Country folks are always friendly since they work in tandem and harmony with the big things, like earth and sky, so at festival time in the country it's like one big re-united family. Chichibu has been doing this festival for many centuries now, so the spirits are high in a town that on Festival Night is lit mostly with the golden light from all the stands and lanterns more than street lights, it's very like going back into the past, where the floats are all lit with candles and stand out all the more in the dimness, take on appropriate mystery amid the sound of taiko drums from the dark.

Because of our peripatetic approach, we saw one float go by across the railroad tracks, two set out from the shrine, one streak down a narrow street architectured from way back-- want to visit again just to see that in several lights-- floats wending past people on their roofs, one float pulled up to the crowd and started "bowing" with several float attendants on the teetering float roof talking nonchalantly via cell phone to attendants on the other float roofs, or maybe their girlfriends.

We happened to be in the crowd that one float was "bowing" to, and folks started flocking toward it from along the already crowded street; the pressure soon grew too great and we were squeezed out via an ingeniously arranged crowd pressure-release valve into a narrow alley that led to another great little street, lined with stalls offering every kind of food and pickle and snack between the doors to shops, intriguing old restaurants of every traditional description and bistros old and new (one called "Snob"), and the oldest functioning pachinko parlor I've ever seen (part of its sign in the Shiga Window at left).

It was getting cold so we went into one of the shops to buy some handwarmers, and while there spotted some "red pepper" sox, made of wool blended with silk and somehow incorporating the "hot" constituent of red pepper (capsaicin)!! (Anyone who's ever read Jethro Kloss (Back to Eden) knows how red pepper can warm the feet, so we got some of those too. And they work. (I'm wearing a pair right now. Who needs a stove? I've got a whole kitchen wall full of drying tabascos and thai dragons, so my feet are set for the winter.) Never knew such things existed. Small country towns take you in new directions.

Deep into the night we'd been walking for hours, it was getting colder and colder, then the fireworks began, whole streets full of people looking up at the skies going aaaahhhhh... The beauty of old festivals is as much in the moment as in all the time they bring to bear on the very now with all these new young folks in it that have such ancient things to learn afresh, and how better than a big street-and-sky party with all the heft and boom of the past, all the ardor of being a culture, here it is from us to you, carry on... be noble, be true, have fun, be generous with your gifts and pass it all on, so they do and so they will...

2bCont'd...

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from anarchy of night
Tokyo graffiti sprays
have a nice day

CHICHIBU YOMATSURI Part I

Where to begin, so many high points, but since that's where I left off I'll start with the train pulling in, adding to the mobs already thronging the small town of Chichibu on the second day of the festival, which would climax several hours later that evening, so we wandered the old narrow streets as the day darkened. The stands were already filling around the big circle ringed with tall flags topped with sakaki branches, where all the floats would wind up after coursing and 'bowing' through the neighborhoods well into the night.

The town was like a honeycomb already all lit up, folks coming in from everywhere, with song-and-dance acts at the station; halls and streets in front of stores (like this old-time geta store with the tall black-lacquered high-class geisha geta in the window) and houses full of food stalls (everything from squid to crepes to chocolate bananas and candy apples), game stalls (everything from shoot it to ring it to guess it), novelty stalls (got me an Atom Boy button), sweet stalls (whose star attraction among the taiyaki and the hot-sugar craftsmen was definitely the Korean troupe who were making "Dragonhair" sweets with white sugar 'dragonhair,' and something tasty-looking like treacle spun into the middle, their own hair dragonhair white from the sugar dust and in all their blur they couldn't make the sweets fast enough to sell hand over fist the way the growing crowds wanted). We wandered on.

At first we tried to figure out where might be best to stand to view the floats when they started rolling from in front of the shrine full of screaming children, but there were so many good places maybe it would be best choose one and stay there before it got too crowded, we tried that a few times but started to get pinned in place and couldn't stand not seeing all the great stuff that was going on everywhere else-- there was only one night to take it all in, and at times like that you have to make your move-- so we wound up seeing the whole thing from everywhere, there are lots of cheering and drum-flute-song noisy floats wandering the streets and country folks are great folks to watch festivals with...

2bcont'd...

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KYOTO JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE STREET (#55) NOW OUT!!

Kyoto Journal's special issue "Street" has just been published, and is a work of art. Readers, writers, publishers, photographers, designers... something for everyone. And if I do say so myself, they did a beautiful job with my 'Street' poem inside the front cover... Kyoto Journal is available at discerning venues around the world. It's easy to spot: just look for the really gorgeous magazine.

CHICHIBU TRAIN WINDOW RIFF

Delight the way the trains from Tokyo travel straight through the lives of the people in their path taking only the road they need, zipping past kitchen, bedroom, bookstore, office, country avenues deep in leaves of gold, ivied walls of Meiji time, roofs and roofs and roofs stretching, reaching away to Chichibu...

Glimpses down arms-wide alleys of countless untold stories in the slant of afternoon sunlight on the scarlet of fallen leaves, a woman stands still and is gone to an old woman in blue squatting on another street, chatting...

It is bright, there are ceremonies, a man on a bicycle rolls out of the sun, offices full of others, quiet empty lots, old folks in the shady park, small rivers bridged along the ways that are of silver amid the green of grass and gray of stone, in small parks are ducks on springs waiting for the kids...

Laundry in the sun, broad tracts of actual trees, big white blocks of former graffiti, new houses going up like soldiers marching out of the city, local folks on bicycles waiting for our train to pass, now and then a station center with its mirrored buildings like eyes of crazy giant dragonflies...

Schools, middens, houses in valleys, black trees with orange leaves fired by the sun, roads under roads under railroads under roads across rivers even out here it's all getting modern, now rice fields now 'burbs, yet still there are long deep forests with no one in them not far from millions and millions in rooms, but then this is Wednesday...

Mushrooming sports clubs, parking lots, rising slopes of houses, little girl in braids and yellow hat at the bottom of canyons of balconies, then sun through curving slopes of trees and shady cemeteries, flashing glimpses of lives once lived, glimmers of narrow waters then broad, smooth and blinding beneath the bridge to row upon row of harvest-rounded tea trees, all the tiny country streets conforming to random zig-zag of original paddy pathways argued over centuries, madness to drive if you don't know the way...

Stations get more and more country, less and less hurry, with less and less English, more and more museum, going from never-saw-so-many bicycles or stacked-up elevated highways to fading old houses tucked in shrinking corners throwing nothing away, stacking it up outside beside the daikon rows reaching green in the curve of the widening road...

Mobs are waiting to board the train to Chichibu they stream on, arms full, eyes full, ready ready ready to festival...

The leaves are reaching that rusty color now beneath the half-moon sky full of galloping clouds, horsetails curved at their silvery ends like the curl of the pale moon...

A single board bridges the fast stream before the tunnel, things get sleepy...

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PS:

Before leaving the next morning: For those current and future grandparents who might be interested, I've started a new section in the sidebar, "GRANDFATHERING", in which I'll be listing relevant posts chronologically as I have time...

CHICHIBU YOMATSURI

Tomorrow morning Echo and I are Shinkansenning to Saitama to see the Chichibu Yomatsuri (Chichibu Night Festival), one of the three great float festivals of Japan. And a wild one. On the way back here the day after, I'll spend an afternoon visiting my old Mita neighborhood in Tokyo for the first time in over 25 years. I'll be back here after that with words and photos to spell out over the following days...

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LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS

Well, Forbes magazine doesn't seem uncertain: "Surge at U.S. factories has Q4 GDP looking strong," says its Dubious Administration-sounding headline, bolstered by these upbeat comments:

"All the indications are that the dramatic surge in economic growth in the third quarter, to 8.2 percent, took business executives and factory owners by surprise..."

"Overall economic growth is looking like at least a solid 4.0 percent pace for the October-December period, confirming that the recovery is on a sustainable footing."

"'Q4 is off to a good start,' said Lehman Brothers financial economist Drew Matus, who has revised up his forecasts for growth next year."

"On balance, the data is extremely encouraging and consistent with the view that the economy is gathering momentum and poised for ongoing strength beyond the surge in GDP in the third quarter."

Boy, sure sounds pretty rosy, unless you happen to know that most of that surge is from military spending, which is basically like taking the biggest earth mover in the world and using it to shove your tax money into a bottomless hole 24 hours a day for as long as you allow it to.

Then there's the more realistic appraisal of Jay Taylor:

"The U.S. is already for all practical purposes a bankrupt country. I say that because we are already--even before the baby boomers retire--relying on borrowings of $1.5 to $2 billion per day from foreigners, not to build our infrastructure or plant and equipment that will enhance wealth over the longer term, but rather to continue consumption well over the limits of any other country on the face of the earth. As a nation, we are hopelessly addicted to consumption and it is every bit as pathological as the alcoholic husband that drinks all his paycheck up before he buys groceries and pays the rent for his family. We are living on borrowed time. We are so far gone that we can no longer compete effectively with other nations. Why would foreign countries continue to invest in America? Already we are seeing a huge drop-off from foreign private sector investment in the United States. Central banks are buying U.S. paper, but that is part of the beggar-thy-neighbor currency devaluation pathology that is seeping back into the world for the first time since the 1930s.

Bear in mind that foreign countries don't have to withdraw the money they have already put in the U.S. to cause the U.S. to collapse. All they have to do is stop sending us $1.5 to $2 billion per day and the dollar will tank, big time. As Richard Duncan said in his book, The Dollar Crisis, 'The dollar is destined to collapse because the U.S. economy will soon no longer be able to generate a supply of secure U.S. dollar-denominated investment vehicles sufficiently large to enable the rest of the world to recycle its annual half a trillion dollar current account surplus.' And if that is the case, then why would the Chinese and Japanese continue to send us real tangible consumer goods if all they get back in return are pieces of paper that are without value and in fact continue to lose value against say the yen, the euro, and gold?"

Gosh, that doesn't sound too good; surely it can't be true? Why would the Dubious Administration lie to us? There's more truth to be found in an article in the New York Times, which says in part:

"In other words, the government has cooked the books. It has been a more subtle manipulation than the one during the Reagan administration, when people serving in the military were reclassified from "not in the labor force" to "employed" in order to reduce the unemployment rate."

So who are you going to believe? The Dubious Administration and its increasingly rich friends as upbeat economy floggers, or your own financial future? Maybe it would be best to get ready for hard times, unless you work for Halliburton...

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UGUISU UNCERTAINTIES

Woke up at dawn this morning and the big ole wind was still gusting the leaves around as it ambled west, kickin aimlessly through all those piles of gold along its way, yet the air as balmy as a spring day, a bit of incredible-as-it-may-seem actual sun getting a beam in edgewise and glowing the whole mountainside like a living rainbow, harbinging some maybe even blue sky today, and at the center of it all a very confused uguisu (warbler), clearly questioning his calendar yet singing uncertainly, is this mike on, not the usual ooooooboy, isntthisgreat? oooooboy, thisisreallygreat!, but a very halting and querulous whatisgoingon... whatis... what... whatisgoing... whatisgoingonherehuh... anybodyknow... whatmonthisthis... testing... He was the only uguisu around, which made it kind of pointless to be ad libbing so confusedly with such a superb voice, but he kept it up, pausing now and then to recheck his organizer to see if this was really December, no way. Couldn't be. I understand how he feels.

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WINDY MEDITATIONS

The big December typhoon slowly slides over the landscape, earlier today beneath pink mother-of-pearl clouds turning the Lake into a gray and black silk shawl some angel threw carelessly on the ground for all the ooohs and ahhhs, the same wind carefully flipping all the covers off my firewood with its wind pinky and flinging the last of the leaves to the ground then kicking them around with its clumsy invisible feet what a big lunky monster it is bigger than the landscape and tireless, three days now it hasn't slept, looking for firewood to uncover, surely the blustery lug has better things to do, like speed sailboats and birds along, crank those wind generators, make itself useful I'm beginning to sound like the wind should do what I want but conversely thank you wind for teaching me patience in the face of your relentless peskiness in blowing over my motorcycle and my bicycles and sending my tarps down the mountain I hope you had fun sounds like you still are, out there in the dark, was that my toolshed

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ROCKERS UNITE TO OUST BUSH

ROCK ON!! Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy!

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BUSH IS SERVING THEM TURKEY, ALRIGHT

[As a veteran who put in all his time without one minute AWOL, I am truly disgusted at what this turkey is doing to veterans (shedding tears in the turkey scene!), including the men he's serving turkey big time (see below) and sending into the jaws of death. (All emphasis mine)]

"President Bush, having surprised the nation with his Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad, asked Americans on Saturday to volunteer to help military personnel and their families. [Are military personnel and their families that hard up?]

'I'm pleased to report back from the front lines that our troops are strong, morale is high and our military is confident we will prevail,' the president said in his weekly radio address."
Full article here.

[Talk about staged!! Air Force One touched down at Baghdad International Airport at 5:20 AM Baghdad time. Bush was on the ground for two and a half hours serving turkey and stuffing for BREAKFAST to soldiers no doubt surprised to be awakened at that hour for thanksgiving "dinner," as the carefully selected press in attendance played it up, never letting on to the American people that it was all as staged as the Oscars. Bush zipped unannounced into a totally secure-on-base 6 am turkey breakfast for two hours before zipping out again in the dark in a blacked out airplane (same way he zipped in). He had to get there before Hillary Clinton began walking around actual Baghdad in the open on her pre-announced trip the next day.]

ACTUAL FACTS OF BUSH'S GRATITUDE TO VETERANS, WITH LOTS OF STUFFING AND NO GRAVY

"Bush administration slashes veterans' benefits"

"Even more than his father, and Ronald Reagan before him, Bush is cutting budgets for myriad programs intended to protect or improve the lives of veterans and active-duty soldiers. Bush's handlers have worked hard, through the use of snappy salutes and fly-boy stunts, to present the service-ducking former National Guardsman as the soldiers' friend. But though Republicans enjoy widespread military support, Bill Clinton was the only president of the last four to cut weapons programs instead of veteran benefits.

Consider the following:

With 130,000 soldiers still in the heat of battle in Iraq and more fighting and dying in Afghanistan, the Bush administration sought this year to cut $75 a month from the "imminent danger" pay added to soldiers' paychecks when in battle zones. The administration sought to cut by $150 a month the family separation allowance offered to those same soldiers and others who serve overseas away from their families. Although they were termed "wasteful and unnecessary" by the White House, Congress blocked those cuts this year, largely because of Democratic votes."

Incredible. For more disgusting details of the total turkey Bush is handing to veterans, see In These Times...

SPARROWS' INN

Following a long spell of rainy cloudy weather we get a bit of no surprise whatsoever in three more days of rain and warm weather, caught up as we are in a battle of the titans as an implacable (late November!) typhoon pushes in from the Pacific, going head-to-head against a muscular cold front trying to push down from Siberia into what is traditionally called Snow Country, bringing us strong winds and warm rain that should be quiet snow up to here.

But there's nothing I like better on a rainy day than a little serendip, and Echo finds the greatest stuff on her vast grapevine. Off we went into the mist up Route 367 along the narrow valley of the Katsura River on the other side of the mountain (chronicled earlier here), in search of Suzume-no-oyado (Sparrows' Inn) a natural-food restaurant out on the now brightly forested riverbank. We drove and drove through tiny villages, through vibrant autumn colors in the rolling mist and slanting rain, I had to get out and take some misted pictures, till at last we arrived at the restaurant, in an old thatched-roof farmhouse that was moved here piece by piece from Aomori Prefecture.


What nice people! What great food! What a picturesque place in the Autumn rain! (And can be rented for large events.) Big old black-beamed farmhouse with irori (traditional firepit); lots of etegami (picture-letters) on the walls, and natural products for sale. The meal consisted of as much brown rice as we wanted, black and white sesame, broccoli, daikon radish, mushrooms, pumpkin, carrot, wild pickles, honey-salted plum, hijiki and misoshiru , but these are just the names; think perfect shojin ryori served all at once. Perfectly filling, too, and for only 850 yen. You can get there by local bus from Kyoto.

IMAGINATION RAMBLE

The apparatchiks who are assigned to think of such things tend generally to think of imagination the same way they thought of ketchup as a vegetable: just another box to be ticked on the form, another quotidian quota to be filled, one more lesson to be learned on Wednesdays in fourth grade, another certificate on the way to graduation, when you can get on with your REAL life.

In other words, to the disimagined, imagination is not essential to living or to life, may even be detrimental if practiced in excess. We have Hollywood to do it for us. That's like saying if you pay us to breathe, you don't have to. Never before in history has imagination been so threatened in the young.

We lament the loss of the rainforests and the whales, bemoan the disappearance of the wild, but say nothing about the loss of imagination, which may be the greater loss, for it has made all the other losses possible; who could kill a thousand whales or cut down a rainforest but a person without imagination? The disimagined children of today will own the world tomorrow. To be without imagination is to be without intrinsic power, and powerlessness worships powerful things. The future begins right now.

Imagination is not greatly encouraged by human systems of organization because it is by nature free; it is beyond established control, inimical to chains, can't be enslaved, organized or taxed, depends upon no institution. It is the source of change, pure and simple, of new ideas. Imagining is anarchic; it is not at home in classrooms or file cabinets. And though wild, it is inherently benevolent. Imagination is the habitat of the spirit. Those who have been deprived of imagination will hunger for that freedom all their lives. What food it is and limitless, when you are the source!

Every consciously and responsibly caring parent and grandparent has seen the light that lights up in the eyes of still new children at the slightest spark of their own mind's imagining. One recent rainy day while Kaya (nearly 3 years old) was visiting us and looking imagination hungry, I took a tiny ceramic owl I have, the size of a pinky tip, put it in a tablespoon and called it the owl's magic airplane, and began to fly the magic airplane way up high in the big blue sky that was now above the kitchen table, and then all at once the magic airplane became the magic boat, floating the tiny owl perilously upon the vast and turbulent ocean a kitchen table can so swiftly become, and Kaya's eyes lit up like christmas trees at the spark that took fire in her mind.

The whole idea of imagining was perfectly at home in her, as native in her as the seeds of myth have always been in ourselves: she saw how it all worked, how to tell her own stories and it was ok, it was a part of her, that big doorway in her mind that she could open anytime to anywhere, and so she did and passed on through and back again, all that rainy day.

I will do everything I can to ensure that she never loses that spark, or the key to that door. And so we should with all our children. This fire of the spirit that is the imagination, that can so warm and quicken our lives and lead us to new places, should be praised and nurtured, made the key to every entire life so as to enrich us all, not taken away, homogenized and sold back to us as cookie-cutter commodities that stifle all imagining and leave us hungry and incomplete; else tomorrow will have no dream of its own.