I'm jogging on a path in Yosemite Valley. As I come from the woods into a meadow, I pause in surprise. It looks mowed, like a city park.

A jogger passes, but slows and gawks and turns around to suddenly blurt "You're bad--you're possessed! You were always this bad, but you're more EGREGIOUS now!" He turns and runs.

Before? I've never even met this jerk. "Egregious", huh?

There's a pebble in my shoe I care more about than him. I stop to pull it out, thinking of that song from Godspell, where death is compared to a pebble in your shoe.

I slip it out and stare. Weird--it's not death, but not a pebble, either. It's a Japanese woodblock print, a "picture of the floating world". Looks like Hokusai! I wonder if it means mortality or creativity? I drop my possession back in my shoe and run on. Hey, I won't squash it: it's already flat. Wow, my soul's flat...

I mean my sole.

Don't I?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Yosemite = a sacred place for me, when I was a kid. Now it's full of tourists, trash, noise and busses.
• Jogger who's sure I'm evil = not just fundamentalists but even some of my liberal friends insist mere dreamwork's not a real spiritual path.
• Footprint = a very literal pun. A Japanese print stuck to my foot!
• My Hokusai "possession" = I am like Hokusai. He called himself "an old man mad about painting." Maybe art DOES possess me like a demon. But unlike that old Christian pebble, Death... my possession seems to fit my soul.

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