I wish I could remember… What forest it was, what person made the quote, the exact words, but I think the best I can do is the following… “I made purple tea from the pine cones. I slept on a bed of leaves and shrubbery. I awoke, light piercing the canopy. I clung to the top of trees, while storms swept through and preached to me with rain and wind. In the cathedral of this forest I worshiped.” - Someone somewhere - heavily paraphrased from Aaron Blakeley’s miasmic mind. It is amazing the change a week will make. I went from feeling very hopeful about the world and the things I had put my hands on; to only wanting to play video games and do the easiest, laziest things possible. Man’s mind is a cathedral of his own making. Sometimes I find myself (I assume you do as well) choosing the smallest, darkest, most cramped cathedral possible. I want my mind to be a hermit crab wound tightly into a shell, protected but useless, except to be eaten by birds. How I get here always surprises me. A slow creeping into smaller and smaller spaces of thought. Never all at once. One day I just wake up and there I am a milieu of depression not quite depressed enough, anxiety not quite anxious enough, and apathy (the worst of these three) not quite apathetic enough. The heavy dust of these hangs in the air of my thoughts while I huddle around some glowing embers with dirty smoke trying to remember where the fire came from and why it was started in the first place. Then a friend so glorious that it is mercy that he is obscured comes and reminds me even in this gray that I actually am a cathedral builder. That I don’t have to live confused in this hovel. He hands me a log and some tender. They feel useful in my hands and I begin again to feed those embers. I blow on them and he; ... He blows on them. Then I see in the light, through the dust, this mind of mine is a cathedral of my making. It is mine to build and polish. It is for me to sing songs and revel in those cosmic connections that flow through us humans. I decide what it is dedicated to. I decide where I put the fire, what I feed the fire. I take his guidance. I once again place it on the altar. Licking red-gold flames dance, leftover forgotten incense begins to burn and I once again start on the task of righting the cathedral and readying it for worship.