I realized then why we respond to the sound of the waves, and the falling of rain, and wind in the trees. Because they are meaningless. They are nothing to do with us. They are outside our control. They remind us of a time, very early in our lives, when we did not understand the noises around us but simply accepted them in our ears; and so they provide blessed relief from our continual needy attempts to change our world in magic deed or endless thought. Meaningless sound, which we love against the anxiety of action, of pattern-making, of seeking to comprehend and change. As soon as we picked up something and used it for a purpose, we were both made and damned. Tool-making gave us the world, and we lost our minds.

Epilogue - Cannon Beach - The Lonely Dead (2004)