While the rest of the nation is thinking profound thoughts about the Nature Of Consciousness and the Ethics of Creation, I am strangely happy to be thinking only with my hands. Despite my tweaks, I would never make a good Ascensionist; I love the physicality of things, dance and sex and sailing. I suppose even with Mephista gone I could have tried to program Cloudmaker's strange map, but instead I have been building it in clay. My mother's influence perhaps. Or maybe, on Mann Act day, a little nod to my human heritage, for clay is all we are, after all..

About the colors: I meant to use white and brown, then I ran out of brown and used red, then I ran out of red ... you get the idea. Also, Cloudmaker has a lot of slopes indicated as minutely graded steps; but without a computer to help me, I've pretty much just shaped them up as cones or buttes or bluffs as best I could.

This may be the completely wrong tack to take (little boat humor there) but on a rainy day when everyone else is worried and argumentative, I find myself, for the first time in a long time, curiously at peace.

Except I'm out of colored clay again, and have to pop out to get some more.

Love,

L