I took a straight picture that made me look like a thirty-year-old Italian who'd kill anybody who said something against his mother.

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running - that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach.

The silence is so intense that you can hear your own blood roar in your ears but louder than that by far is the mysterious roar which I alwas identify with the roaring of the diamond wisdom, the mysterious roar of silence itself, which is a great Shhhh reminding you of something you've seemed to have forgotten in the stress of your days since birth.

The cowboy music twanged in the roadhouse and carried across the fields, all sadness. It was all right with me. I kissed my baby and we put out the lights.

But I remember seeing a mess of leaves suddenly go skittering in the wind and into the creek, then floating rapidly down the creek towards the sea, making me feel a nameless horror even then of 'Oh my God, we're all being swept away to sea no matter what we know or say or do

I just won't sleep," I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.

And when the fog's over and the stars and the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight.