For twenty years I created a world of goldseekers, Indians, adventurers, and a few very bad hombres. After that I created another world where a young man disappears into the tunnels beneath Vietnam and discovers the reasons why they will never surrender. Now I am done working with them, carving and shaping mountains and streams, now I miss those worlds, those heroes terribly. I am lonely for my friends of ten thousand days and nights. The modern world holds nothing and no one to compare to them. Yes I can still walk the canyons where the goldseekers toiled in stone and water searching for the earth's rarest treasure. And still I can sense their ghosts laughing and crying in the shadows of this world. But they are all gone, except as I recreate them, call them, conjure them, to live again in the world of stories.
The truth is, I belong more to their world than to this one. The truth is, I do not belong to this century at all. I was fairly able to navigate the 20th century--all the while wondering where all of the people, cars and buildings came from. I am barely able to navigate at all in the new 21st century with all of its gizmos and wizardry. Who are these modern people? I do not know them. I have nothing to say to them they would not regard as quaint or antiquated or out of date. For one thing these new people talk too much and have no knowledge of the power of silence. I prefer the quiet whisperings of streams to the constant yakking of men and women who have nothing to say. So you see I am a hopeless case.
So if you meet a stranger who does not care to talk, perhaps you may understand that he is not really here.
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