The first time that I remember meeting my mind was around 1975. It was the day Mr. Rogers pointed the TV camera at himself standing in front of the TV that showed Mr. Rogers standing in front of a TV that showed Mr. Rogers. My dad was uncomfortable with me watching Mr. Rogers. My dad was finite. A bag holds his ashes on the high shelf in my bedroom closet.

When I was in High School, I got an Oxford English Dictionary for Christmas. It came in two huge volumes. It was the condensed version of the one that came in 8 huge volumes. The two books slid into compartments in the included case. There was a drawer on top for a magnifying glass because each page was actually shrunken four times so four pages could fit where one was supposed to be. These books were a labyrinth and I was a wanderer. The word “Art” had its own page. Well, a ¼ of a page. ‘Art’ is an important word.

I lived at Pomona College from 1984 to 1987. Honnold Library stood at one end of campus. It was formidable. Forcing the road to turn and slink away towards buildings of less substance. There was a cement gate somewhere else on campus that welcomed you to something about Christian Civilization but Honnold Library was the entrance. I remember the doors, big and heavy, slow to open, like the best present on Christmas. They probably had several small windows, not so much to see through but to let out the light.

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. … As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny, and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.

• Audre Lorde, Poetry is not a Luxury

There is a road that goes up the back side of Mount Vision in Inverness, CA. It’s kinda a secret road. It’s closed to cars that didn’t have a key. You could ride a bike but it required intention. I brought a pen and a notebook. I aspire to always have a good pen and a well worn notebook. There is a lookout point where you can look over Drakes Bay to where the Point Reyes lighthouse stands. I sat on Mount Vision, inside tall grass, my notebook staying stubbornly brand new. Maybe I would write more later. Maybe I would know more later.

In a desperate effort to make the Oxford English Dictionary continue to exist, it’s online now. It’s like a bear skin rug, splayed out on the floor where infants are not devoured for spilling sippy-cups on its taxidermy head. On the Internet, a medium that allows for near infinite content, it is reduced; a medium that allows for infinitely recursive paths, it has only static links to smaller places. Don’t click them. They don’t go anywhere. Serendipity is dead there.

Honnold Library had a magnificent card catalog. There was also a brand new computer system that listed titles. I thought these computers were probably a good idea but definitely useless when you were in the building, with the books, because Honnold library had a magnificent card catalog, and words are real when printed on pages, bound in books and placed in library stacks; spines asking you to tilt them from the top, one finger, maybe two, set on the pages right where they are folded and sewn and there is a little lip you can pull on to tilt them toward you. It had maybe 400 drawers and maybe 400 cards in each drawer. Probably more? Each card was a book somewhere in the stacks. There were no specific books I wanted. I was wandering. I wanted books in the area of books that I might want. Books next to books that were next to books I might learn to want. “What is War?” next to “Why do we fight?” next to “Is Human Nature Even a Thing?” The path would appear as I walked it with my real feet. The path would appear as a consequence of my curiosity. Online, the Internet, is just a road, well paved by the recommendations of people who followed the link that I followed. Curiosity is not generative there. This road will soon have fences to make sure we stay on it, to make sure we stay in our lane.

One blasphemous sect proposed that the searches be discontinued and that all men shuffle letters and symbols until those canonical books, through some improbable stroke of chance, had been constructed. The authorities were forced to issue strict orders. The sect disappeared, but in my childhood I have seen old men who for long periods would hide in the latrines with metal disks and a forbidden dice cup, feebly mimicking the divine disorder.

• Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel

I still don’t have a well worn notebook but I have written more of its mythology. I keep it in the small pocket in the bib of my well worn overalls. There’s a skinny pocket next to it, a slot for my pen. The overalls were made by someone who thought I would use that skinny pocket for a pencil, to mark wood or write down measurements. My overalls think my body is supposed to be a different shape. There are buttons and corresponding button holes, just above where my overalls think my hips are; buttons that I can’t fasten. They make extenders, connectors, little creatures, arms stretched, holding on to the hole in one hand and the button in the other. Straining unreasonably. My pants are trying to do something. My pants have intention.

Our minds are a problem. We construct our world through living, actual breath, moving air in and out, hearts pushing and pulling on liquid blood. We build paths by walking, real feet. We understand our world by making art, real hands. Not just artists - the painter, the writer, the poet - but also the carpenter, the scientist, the philosopher, the potter, the plumber, the teacher, and the custodian. Art is fake. Art is artificial but it’s not pejorative. Art is imitation, replication, introspection, commentary, imagination, imaginary, personal and public. Art is real. Machination is not art. Machinating meaning is blasphemous. Not in a fire and brimstone sort of way but in an insult to life sort of way, a cruel and inhuman sort of way, a profane and puerile sort of way, a craven and sanctimonious sort of way. Like masturbating on public transportation while being simulcast on a really, really, really big jumbotron. Which, consequentially, would be art.