Wail's Idiom

     But here I am, anyway, Master Owl, not properly asleep, no, and not properly dead nor dreaming, but certainly, through these phrases others formed so many times before me, with only a slight rearrangement, like the tic of an unsteady scrawl, the twitch of an old shawl, passing both into and out of my mind. No one ever truly invented a language. Heirs, all of us, rich or poor, to the grounds of these estates that lie around us, follies and ponds, sheds and meadows, the neglected, the abandoned, and the well-kept as well, their novelties and antiquities equally alien and familiar, ours for now, as we little things who walk among them, ants in their kitchens, peepers in their wells, tourists in their bedrooms, are theirs. This is occult, Master Owl. Eery human occupation and utterance, every little product of every little subculture is occult.
     And in this chaste sense only, I am. Among the nothings that have made me and make me as I touch them I am. We are such things as dreams alone have never made, as beds have never denned, although we come from them, forgetful of every thing except that we remember, surprising ourselves three times: I am. I am nothing. Here I am.