Eadweard Muybridge History doesn't stop though we'll take a few hours to climb into the porthole of sleep, then take out the trash; peel a bowl of potatoes, crack an egg, boil coffee, wipe down the counters, read a book, curse, laugh, cry. I don't know which planets will align with the sun some coming weekend, or whether they'll be visible through the rough breaker of trees. This morning, in the bay, wind carves a high, scalloped path through waves. History is aways turning each crest like that, so we are figures in a flip book or stop-motion film where the horses run eternally in silhouette over the Palo Alto track and boys play never- ending leapfrog. It is 1893, or 1874, or 1833. The woman in the green silk gown and Gibson girl hairdo and the man with his arm around her waist, sporting a thin mustache and tuxedo tails, twirl round and round without stopping for a breath. When the photographer caught up with his wife's lover in Calistoga, he said "Here's the answer to the letter you sent my wife," and shot him point-blank. I've never seen a bison, which is ecologically extinct. But there's an animated sequence from 1887, remastered in 2006, where the animal is cantering over a field.