"Good acoustics down here," says the girl on the subway platform, half to me/half to herself, screwing her flute together as I pass. Waiting for the train to the boat, I let her gentle trilling ease me behind someone else's eyes, take me to someplace that's not near here, some world we haven't had a chance to ruin, somewhere we can arrive knowing what we know now, with all the lessons learned.

So that we can keep the wisdom but forget its price, get down to basics a second time around. What will we need? What do we need? Little. Mud. Fish. Rituals and myths. Mud will do for clothing, protect the skin from the sun. Fish to play with, slick sensuous vital thrashing, then to eat. (Why not? They don't mind, not really. They will eat us in turn, cast our clean bones up on the shore for us to cuddle with and kiss.) Ceremonies and tales because they come to us instinctually, we're makers of symbols and stories, before anything else.

Remember this: You are an animal. You have always been an animal. You will remain an animal. You will die an animal. Driving a car, reading Kant, talking on your cellular phone, you did not depart the animal kingdom. Consider the alternatives: vegetable, mineral. Why not be what you are, delightedly, without reservation?

Go pollywogging in the ooze. Feel its unquestioning acceptance as it makes room for you. Roll and squirm, rub and slither. Find the fish in yourself, the amphibian, the snake. Trap yourself. Hypnotize yourself. Devour yourself.

You can let go, dissolve into it any time you want. For now, feel the entire surface of your skin, the interface between what you call yourself and the rest of the universe.

Waiting for the boat to my island, I let my eyes look past the flotsam at the dock, let someone else's corneas and retinae envelop mine. Her eyes are a road to this place of rot and germination. I walk it, following the tracks of a fox.

Something else was here once, not that long ago but long enough for me to know it's over and they're gone. The mud goes on, unstoppable. Now there's us. We pretend to be them. Try what they left on for size. How could it fit? Right angles are not comfort, boxes are not shelter, crosses are not sanctuaries. They are snares and fetters and burdens. Like shame, like dunce caps. Enough of it.

Slap of the waves against the bow, foaming wake off the stern. Fathoms down, silt, restless crawlers feeding, relentless conversion of everything back into mud. Cloaca mundi.

Whose eyes am I using? She stands close to them, brings me close to them, makes me one of them, herself one of us, unafraid. Sees us as sculptures, forms in deep space, objects reflecting light, complexities of tone, beats in the rhythm, a monochrome symphony. Patient scrutiny, attentive. Laughter. Melancholy. Solitude. Companionship. Solemnity. Play. I flower.

Don't bring that house into the mud! Dirty your feet before you come out here! Learn from the pigs. Who knows the mud better? Chancho limpio nunca engordo, my son's mother used to say: a clean pig never gets fat. Grunt. Let the earth engulf you, cake dry around you. Let your sister cradle you. Sit on him. Lie next to me motionless till the sun goes down, make no sound, merely feel my matted hair drying against your face. Trust: let us turn you upside down. Tie on your mask of leaves and I'll tie on mine, dance with me, our baby in your belly kicking between us. Tear that fish open with your teeth. Taste it, and the mud you both came from. Let the mud back into yourself, acknowledge the mud already in you. Little milagros erupt from it spontaneously, a plague of blessings, small miracles all over your cheeks and forehead. Miracles love the mud, for in mud anything can happen.

My boat reaches the far shore. Jitney drivers clamor for my trade. I opt to walk in the cool spring night, a ringing in my ears. Around me stream people of all colors, voices of many accents. Whose eyes are these I have stood behind? Who is it sees the textures of the surfaces of this oozing world with such precision, such clarity, so cleanly?

This is what I am. This is what you are. This is what we are. This is what they are. This is what it all comes down to.

(With this issue, this column celebrates its first year as a regular monthly feature in this newspaper. My thanks to the original publishers of the Star Reporter group of newspapers, Roy Lindberg and John Larsen, for giving it a start, and to the new publishers, the good folks at the Courier-Life chain, for encouraging me to continue it under their auspices.)