Space and a Dead Mule

We rambled over a tremendous amount of space every day, over vast areas of silent, empty woods ( a pine woods on sandy ground is more like a desert than anything else) , rambled over miles of wasteland trying to find the center of it, the heart, the place to know it. We sensed the forces around us but they were too thinly spread, too finely drawn over all the miles of woods for us to grasp them. The forces eluded us. We would run into a clearing knowing that just a moment ago, in that instant before we had arrived, something of importance had happened there. But when we found the dead mule we knew we were very close. The forces spread like air over the woods had converged here, on this animal the moment he died, and were not yet altogether gone.



Stop-Time by Frank Conroy