That it cannot be summoned, bid, baited, beckoned, smithed or shook from a tree. That it isn’t made from this or that raw material – and to the extent it’s sealed inside a fortress whose circumference you’ve begun earnestly to map and probe, that fortress is entranceless, its polished walls rising steeply into a sort of smudge of moon and sun.

It arrives, sometimes blurtingly, sometimes in a limousine, sometimes struggling with its suitcases. It makes its way up the hill. It tumbles from its nest. It forms droplets on the bathroom mirror. Sometimes it is gone for a furiously long time. What you can do is ready the earth, and yourself. You can choose the vessels with which you mean to shape it, and carry them, like a set of wind chimes, in a simple hip-satchel.