The trail crosses a creek, rises steeply, emerges in a parking lot, enters the woods again, finally reaching another parking lot, a mansion nearby. While tourists wait for the opulent house to open, I walk to a spectacular view of the city, Mt. Hood, snowcapped in mid-summer, pontificating behind.

Nearby, a group of Japanese boys are chatting with their American guide. "Fuji-san?" I offer. He grins. A potter married to a woman of Japanese descent, we talk of Japan. I retell my story of visiting the poet Gary Snyder in Kyoto the year he left to build his California home. "Is he still alive?" the potter asks. Indeed an era has passed! The Beat Movement as a metaphor for the urban artist, and for particular modes of observation some cells were discovered in the pons whose activity decreased to about half during non-REM sleep and was virtually arrested during REM sleep while the rest of the brain was active and near seizure levels. What did the cells contain? Norepinephrine and serotonin--the amines of the city, the flâneur has become a legendary icon of the architextual aesthetics of the urban novel, a figure who has become an icon, the subject of academic papers, and many of its members have recently passed away. I shrug my shoulders, and say, "Perhaps."

After a peanut butter sandwich and bottled water, I continue on, until reaching the Himalayan Trail. The trail-signs poorly thought-out, I return to the mansion to contemplate the vertically and horizontally-lined buildings that  foreground the white slopes Mt. Hood, suspended in the sky, like a dream.  hood.gif (35883 bytes)

              

Where confronted by a mountain, neuroanatomy must represent a variable physical reality that differs from individual to individual. Thus, human brain map atlases of structure and function require a representation that accounts for variance among individuals. Further, neuroscientists have yet to agree on a standard reference system and nomenclature to define brain location. This again differs from geographical maps, where architecture always comes up short. Buildings are built, safe and predictable. Mountains are born, usually in fire. While some mountains, like Mt. Hood, still demand human sacrifice every year.

 

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