When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old, rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism, Communism, Christianity, and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in present realities.
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A tree trunk the size of a man grows from a blade as thin as a hair. A tower nine stories high is built from a small heap of earth.
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Now this is the Law of the Jungle, As old and as true as the sky And the wolf that can keep it shall prosper, But the wolf that will break it must die. Like the creeper that girdeth the tree trunk, The Law floweth forward and back, The strength of the pack is the wolf, And the strength of the wolf....is the pack.
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Forest sways, rocks press heavily, roots grip, tree-trunk close to tree-trunk. Wave upon wave breaks, foaming, deepest cavern provides shelter.
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