Consider the optimism of alchemy. See how desperately we strive to create what we never were from what we really are. A stone, a potion, a spell: anything that can transform us into the actual we aren't, into the being we'll never be, through a pulseless world of winter, still and lifeless; where yet, the tantalizing possibility of Spring beckons like the ghost of a beautiful woman murmuring to us: *yes I said yes I will Yes.