"Mountains Into Clouds" (*)

(I) Eyes reach into a distance no body can attain, and place a mark at intervals of space and time. Eyes inhabit a region in which descending shafts of darkness momentarily blend with ascending shafts of light, and they both illumine and darken the world. Then they vanish from each other's presence, and disappear into their particular colors and shapes. This is our Reality: to be alive to sensation and wonder. (II) The magic begins at dusk: spiritual eyes have been patiently blind, and now they assert their traits: being soundless, weightless, scentless, they glide through the heaviness of Nature, like a Vedic priest's knife slicing the sacrificial butter. They stretch further into the Night, and arrive on immense plains where they envision cities rise up against the power of Nature with the power of Humanity. Nature is a stream of both physical and spiritual lights, united to make both Night and Day prosper in their alteration. Then Humanity enters this Reality: under the branches of the sky, they rush into love and hate, learn true lessons, and try to make to make two become one. Above the roots of the ground, they gather together, possessed of love and hate, and make a dwelling for both solitude and company. And they become One Reality, sometimes dark and sometimes light. * This phrase from A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM reveals the ambiguity of how and what eyes see.