There was this line that goes: the Red Man's values were expressed in the way he lived; and they were made up of relationships with other people and with his home, his land.

 Great store is set-and rightly so-in the freewheeling individual, the man or woman who resists all definition. But there can be no 'I' without a 'we' or even a 'Thou'. As time rolls on we begin to understand that not all determinations are constricting, that freedom lies in another direction, one less hostile to what faces you. It is wrong, you think, to say there is no 'east', no 'west'. But there will always be a way out, moments when the silver hand of the compass points north, and you orient yourself, even while standing in the very same spot, to another way of thinking, another set of themes.

Is there a word, a line, that will take me back to myself?

Yesterday, as the last light of the day began to flare, you stood in the open talking to a friend and the light all around you delineated every object with a rare precision. Only we remain unknown to ourselves. This great, clear light could have been the light from any northern country and for a moment the world seemed awash, cleansed with its brilliance, our very lives halted the way one halts when seeing a stray photograph amongst all the familiar ones. A crow looks down on us and is amazed by the strangeness of the fact that there are so many blank, wild spaces in the lives of human beings, that after all these centuries of life on earth men and women would be so affected by the changing quality of light.

Our faces, half in shadow, all the losses remembered. A trace of music can still fascinate, hold us. Nothing will change, the human condition an unbreakable thread. But none of us will be around to see it all. There is no set of sets, no comprehensive view, no stepping out into radiant sunlit meadows, only one person gliding into the exact same role as the one who has departed, taking up the fallen robe.