"In places such as Machu Picchu, Palenque, Mesa Verde, Stonehenge, and now here, I always have the odd and somber consciousness of how time peels us off, how irretrievable the past really is, especially in these hot spots where you sense some matrix of culture took place. We can’t help but push our own interpretations on them. It’s a deep wish of philosophers and poets to search for theories of eternal return and time past being time present. Bertrand Russell was closer when he said the whole universe was created five minutes ago. We can’t recover the slightest gesture of those who chopped out this rock, not the placing of the first stone, the lighting of a fire to make lunch, the sniffing of an underarm, the sigh after lovemaking, niente. We can walk here, the latest little dots on the timeline. Knowing that, it always amazes me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash, how everything matters intensely as it is disappearing.”