Sublime

After all these years, that same grid of cubbyholes still lines one wall of the staff break room. One cubby per sales associate, with one cubby leftover as the Lost and Found. A long table and chairs take up most of the space. Lining the wall opposite the cubbyholes is a counter with a sink and microwave. The time clock and the time card slots fill

It’s a single tree with two sexes, older than the separation of yin and yang, the Tree of Renewal, the tree at the universe’s center, the hollow tree housing the sacred Tao.

Lewis Hyde portrays gift economies in general: “The only essential is this: the gift must always move”—that is, people must keep passing it on. To treat a gift correctly is thus to “allow [ourselves] to become a channel for its current.”34