immediately after, then...  The curious thing, though, was that the 
mountain had no interest in bucking me to the ground below, nor did the 
rocks, nor did my legs.  What would?  I think to fall would have been a 
conscious decisions; perhaps not a desired one, but I believe that definite 
choices would have been involved.  Gravity is stubborn, but does not 
breach its limits; sentience must be applied to provoke its eternal pull.
	In the very center, I felt safe.  I could get the view of my 
surroundings I desired, but in the somewhat conservative, non-cutting-
edge perspective with which I felt comfortable.  In the middle, I could 
address some of the higher instincts, comtemplation, reflection, 
circumlocution.  But not too quickly.  Delaying an inevitable (?) 
understanding of my new environs, I first addressed my hunger in the 
culinary facet of my life.  I fixed up some tacos from morocco (a name 
coined by a fond friend of mine) - pita bread, tabouli, feta cheese.  While 
being stung by a honey bee, I ate.
	Enough beating around the bush, I thought.  Time to get on with 
some enlightenment.  Why did I hike miles and miles to the top of a silly 
mountain?-to eat bulgar wheat?-to discover the key to the measurement 
of longitude?-to place an artificial designation on a huge pile of rocks?  
No.  I came to come to a greater understanding of Earth, and its Purpose 
and Reason for Being, and to find my place in It, with all appropriate 
Relativities and Necessities and Contingencies.  I now transcribe what I 
wrote, in all proper notebook convolution:
	"...The collective sound, the collective sight, the collective feeling, 
all the composite dynamism of our human-sized world, thrown into a 
static, permanent being.  All is perfectly still, quiet, calm.  But tingling 
with not unnaturally-present restraint."
	"I am at the top; I can feel the whole of the Earth pushing up 
through me, I am the focal point.  The variegated meanings and values and 
qualities of the world coalesce into the Tip, into an unstateable One 
Understanding.  I am at that tip; yet, my piece of the entire sum is 
miniscule, and I am hardly a visitor to this peak.  I do not understand this 
One Understanding, I do not feel the streams of Life flowing through me,  

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16 Renford Road (four)
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