I awaken on the floor, cold linoleum against my flesh, surrounded by the smudged ink marks that mark my latest attempts at understanding. For a long time I lie there, patterns running through my mind, until the needs of my body are able to intrude upon the ever closer to perfect arrangements I am making. I am hungry, and the physical needs exceeds the mental. I regret losing the pattern I have created but I let it fade back into my mind and stand up. I stumble to the kitchen but am unable to find the nourishment I need. Empty packages and unwashed eating implements are scattered about, their surfaces mottled with the odd, semi-random patterns of mold and decay. I ignore them; I have examined their patterns long ago and find them lacking. I briefly consider the trails of the ants streaming across the counter, watching as they morph and wander in predictable but still random motion but they too I have previously considered and found unable to produce the true patterning I need. I realize that I must leave my place of safety and venture again into the world of others. Into that realm where man has forced existence into plain, orderly patterns that inhibit the growth of true beauty. I stumble into my long-ignored bedroom in search of appropriate clothing. I ponder long over my choice in what to wear, searching for those items which will exist in the necessarily exquisite harmony with one another. Of course

I had come down to the sea. Why I no longer remember. What I do remember is that I swam out away from the shore, far enough out that the sea stretched to the horizon and the swells blocked the shore from my sight so that I was alone in the blue-green waters. I dove beneath the surface and saw that there was the surface of another sea beneath me, waves crashing on the rocks of an underwater shoreline. I somehow perceived that this was the surface of an ancient sea from long ago and that I was above its ancient shoreline. I was swimming through the air above that ancient sea and this air was different from the air above me. It was newer air, air that had not been breathed by countless generations of creatures and so still retained all of its vitality. Though I was beneath my own sea I could breath the air of this ancient time and so swam out to explore this ancient sea. For a long time I swam along this shoreline, watching the waves break against the rocks of a strangely barren land. Then, I reached a point where I could see objects far out to sea and I, desiring a change from the endless rocks, breaking waves and empty beach, swam towards them to see what they were. I discovered the towers of a city, rising from the ancient sea which broke with increasing ferocity about them. The towers were of