[Johanna Fisher]

I just returned from another strange encounter with shopping in the new way[s] we are required to do so now. Standing in line [with a mask of course]was not the way I was accustomed to doing so-I never even experienced Black Friday. I did however have time to think-something again that was strange since one does not often do this when shopping. It is a beautiful day and I was unexpectedly struck by a though from Campbell’s, The Power of Myth in which he tells us that we are in need of a new myth and that myth must be about the planet-our relationship to it and by extension to one another. I find this both poignant and challenging. I found myself feeling alienated and suspicious standing in line and yet I realize we, yes, we need to learn how to live on this planet and one another in a different way-not as in the most recent ways where we fail to see the humanity in one another and one in which the earth is neglected, robbed of her beauty, and seen as a means to an end. Yes, Campbell was surely correct in his call. I am not sure what that myth might feel and sound like, but the call to create one is so needed at this moment.  I wonder if this might be one basis of conversation for us all in this new kind of summertime. Mars-your thoughts about rational language while quite as we say in German  grounded in Vernunft[ I use this German word because it most clearly expresses what I am thinking], I hope can be also expressed poetically-in language that can hold the profundity of such a new myth-a new turn [the volta in the poetry of Shakespeare’s sonnets] in the way we see the world. At the very least we can try-I know as Stephen points out, we cannot predict what it may be,  but in dreaming, painting, dancing and writing, stories,  perhaps we will be able to recognize it-share it and repeat it.