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The sermon for May. 13, 2004 is: for algernon blackwood 11:04 p.m. I miss the company of trees, their vastnesses overshadowing, enveloping me in their age and forgetfulness. Walking among them, hearing brittle leaves crunch underneath my step, breathing in their breathing, murmuring a dew. The distances. My first year in Santa Cruz was spent being more lost than I usually am. One afternoon (I was supposed to go to some independent study to work on some stupid play), I ventured off the path and found myself in the primeval wood. I was lost. I was, belike, totally lost, dude. I started to panic. I remember going through the woods, thinking at first giggly thoughts of Little Red Riding Hood (I very well may have been wearing a hood; it rains a lot in Santa Cruz) and finding myself in a portion of forest covered entirely with spiderwebs. I remember Losing It. I thought, Oh god, I will never get out of this alive. When I'm found fifty years hence, they will find my skeleton, my bones bleached by the sun and the marrow of those bones sucked long dry by Shelob and her children. They will identify me only by my tooth decay and by the freakishly huge size of my skull. Then I fell through a wall of silken web and found myself beside a slide. A slide, for godssake. In the middle of the ancient woods.
 
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