I wasn’t surprised to discover how few of my friends had heard of William Irwin Thompson, when I found out he was coming to town. His disregard for the conceits of the establishment, and the counter-culture, don’t win him large audiences. Nor does he want to be a celebrity (he originally objected to his photograph being in this issue because he feared “becoming like a Norman Mailer”).

We get in the car and drive out of town at 5:20 p.m. Swallowed up in the quickening dusk, we have a smoke, listen to lecture tapes. After an hour, I relax about the car blinkers which are not working.

There is no precipitating event for this elegy. No anniversary. No birthday. No cause whatever, other than personal need. Jesse Stroud lived, struggled, and died. I do not purposefully vilify nor vindicate. Neither do I celebrate. Certainly not regret.

If I could be sure of what it is that I do it would be a great comfort. It has a title, it has rules, responsibilities, regulations and expectations. You would think that this would make it simple.

We live in a time in which we have come to believe that there is not much inside of us — only the things that teachers, parents, and other people have put there. And we think that the only thing we can do is to take this information and to change its form and give it back. We think it is necessary to learn points of reference, rules and techniques to exercise creativity.

One clear afternoon early in the fall, I saw the moon, gray-silver in the high western sky and with pure clarity, I realized:

The moon is not there.
There is no moon.
There are no planets.
There are no stars.