Atlas · Another grammar
Myth
Stories that are not lab results, and do not pretend to be. They still know something.
Ancient World
Once He Dreamed He Was a Butterfly
A sage wakes and cannot tell which side of the dream is home.
The state of Song, traditionally · c. 4th century BCE
Sacred Traditions
The Reed’s Complaint
A flute begins a long poem by remembering the reed-bed it was cut from.
Konya · c. 1258–1273
Art & Literature
A magician dreams a man with such care that the dreamed one can stand, and then learns the cost of that care.
The Circular Ruins
A temple the story will not locate · 1940
Sacred Traditions
Mountains Walking
A thirteenth-century Soto Zen teacher says that mountains walk, and that to know this is not a metaphor you can keep at arm’s length.
Eihei-ji, Echizen · 1240
Sacred Traditions
Thirty Birds
A Persian poem sends the birds across seven valleys to find their king. The king they find is the thirty who arrived: sī murgh, Simurgh.
Nishapur, on the page of *Manṭiq al-ṭayr* · c. 1177
Ancient World
The Places of the Guests
A poet leaves a banquet. The roof falls. He names the dead by where they had been sitting. Memory, in the later telling, becomes a house of places.
Thessaly, as Cicero tells it · as told; written 55 BCE
Ordinary Life
Marigold, water, salt, bread, a photograph. A night in Mexico when the dead are fed. Memory here is a table, not a test.
A Place Set for the Living Who Were
Mexico, in homes and cemeteries · 1–2 November, as practiced