In my seventieth year I have become the lucid dreamer, who has awakened in his sleep of life and knows that he is dreaming. I am a phantom in a phantom landscape. I assume nothing, and find the familiar to be a curiosity. The inherited bedrock of definitions which described reality for me is now porous and insubstantial. Has it been sand all along and I failed to notice? As my consciousness spirals to its predestined disappearance age has forced me to pay attention. Now I begin to see the silhouette of the mystery. I think about thinking and am beyond the comfort of conformity. I must ask questions that I never though to ask before. The most profound questions seem to be transparent in their ordinariness and deceptive in their significance. A child would understand. I know that this modest enquiry must fail. But what else am I to do? Duane Michalls.