Preface from Unicorn Variations: This was my first mood piece, backwhen the world was much younger, with indebtedness to Thomas Wolfe. It'sshort, though.

Listen, please listen. It is important. I am here to remind you. Thetime has come for me to tell you again of the things you must not forget.

Sit down, please, and close your eyes. There will be pictures. Breathedeeply now. There will be odors, aromas.... There will also be tastes. Ifyou listen closely, you will even hear other sounds within my voice....

There is a place--it is far from here in space but not in time, if youhave the means--a place where there are seasons, a place where the spinning,leaning globe moves in an ellipse about its sun, and where the year winds onfrom a springtime to a bloom, then turns toward a harvest where the colorswrestle one another above your head and beneath your feet, meeting at lastin a crisp uniformity of brown through which you walk, now walk, sniffingthe life carried above the deadness by the cold, sharp morning air; and theclouds seen through the opened trees skid across the blue sheet of the skyand do not give down rains; then, moving on, there comes a time of coldnessand snow, and the bark of the trees grows as hard and sharp as the tonguesof files, and each step you take leaves a dark hole in a white world, and ifyou take a handful into your home with you it melts, leaving you water; thebirds do not _wheep, threep, skree, cheep,_ as they do when the color isupon the land and themselves--they zip their feathers tight and vibratesilently upon the shelves of the evergreens; it is a pausing time betweenmovements: The stars come on more brightly (even _this_ star--do not fearit), and the days are short and nothing really gets done but thinking(philosophy was born in the cold countries of the Earth), and the nights are