When I looked, I knew I might never again see so much of the earth so beautiful, the beautiful being something you know added to something you see, in a whole that is different from the sum of its parts. What I saw might have been just another winter scene, although an impressive one. But what I knew was that the earth underneath was alive and that by tomorrow, certainly by the day after, it would be all green again. For I once found a phoenix charred in its own ashes. I brought it home with me, wept through the night, and then tossed it to the wind--its brittle body dispersing all about. This thing without a name and deep within me - how it truly believes that if something is meant to take flight, then it must one way or another.
