to be here, and to recognize it. as here. to take that look heavenward without even the consciousness that it was needed--and breathe. It was needed. And I knew that somewhere. To greet the long-limbed trees and their folding, limping leaves. Amidst this busy street something settles in me. I´m quiet--despite the charcoal eyes of a thousand passing strangers, the lumbering madness of a hundred crowded buses. the diesel, the dust and the lung I´ve seemed to sacrifice. To this city. this glorious, uncelebrated, contaminated city. I find my quiet here on Avenue Makul because, unwittingly, in the smog of a dozen burning questions, I find myself coming to life and liberation.

does this square with what I´ve imagined? Not the slightest. my dreamer´s weeds could not have better choked this picture. yet luckily I live not in the image, but in the smoke of something smoldering deeper in me and in the machinations of this still-composing continent. a country often moved by tectonics is still and never settling into it´s identity. the star of south america? the failure of ecology. the beauty and the bounty persisting despite relentless assault. If I can find peace here, I know that my peace is dropping deeper yet within me.