In the Cretaceous mud we found a shattered dinosaur thigh by following fragments of petrified bone scattered down an arroyo.

But—I think I’ve explained this before—if you find a tiny piece, how can you tell whether it’s a dissolving dinosaur?

Lick it. If it’s bone, rather than some other stone like agate or silicified wood, the porous vesicles left by once-living cells and capillaries will wick up the moisture of your tongue, and it will stick.

The hullabaloo over e-readers has brought back a luscious memory of cycling (or attempting to cycle; it was wetter than the bottom of the sea) in Wales, sleeping in hostels and B&Bs. I had a paperback copy of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. Before I turned out the light each night, I tore off the pages I had just read and dropped them in the waste bin.

And pedaled on, lighter.

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Did you know rationality is solar?

That’s why you wake up at 3 a.m. and worry about the rent, who your kid is dating, and that weird spot on your nose. All the rationality on the planet is in China, and the Chinese are using it.

Just remind yourself of this and go back to sleep. Come morning, you’ll be rational again and the Chinese will be lying awake worrying about the rent, their kids, and their noses.

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In Zuni, if I have it right (and often I don’t), you go through several incarnations after this human one. The first are as food-giving game animals like deer or antelope. But the last—right before you go to heaven to dance for eternity—is as sho:mi:do’kya, the little black stinkbug that raises its tail on our desert’s red earth.

I once had a stinkbug crawl into my old Intellifax 1270 and die there. This caused a paper jam and permanent scratches on the drum, but I felt kind of touched that somebody went to heaven from my fax machine.

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Even when I don’t want to write, if I begin, the flow begins: very steady, like blood, or a river.

Year after year I hiked down Frijoles Canyon to the Rio Grande. The river is always there. In different seasons it is different colors—tan in March, emerald in October—and has different water levels, and the sky above changes color and temperature.

But the river itself is always there.

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We all have too many books. But I have books and rocks.

I have best rocks; second best rocks; third best rocks; and driveway rocks, which I don’t care if somebody steals. When I move, the best, second best, and third best go with me.

Last time I moved, my brother tried to lift a box before he noticed it had been labeled (neatly) ROCKS AND LEG WEIGHTS.

So why, he asked, nursing his lower back, couldn’t you have packed ROCKS with PILLOWS? ROCKS with UNDERWEAR?

Hey. I could have packed them with The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

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