"No."

"Who do you talk to?"

"Look around."

"Ah. As I've heard, you commune with the spirits."

"No. Not that I've noticed."

"Not even demons?"

"Apart from the occasional angry visitor, no."

"Who then?"

"Maybe I misled you a little. I don't talk so much as listen."

"To? The wind? The birds?"

"Sometimes. Did you know they tell me jokes? Have you heard the one about the Hong Kongese who was making 500,000 a year as a vice president of a bank? His boss told him he would have to take a 75% pay cut. He went home and told his wife. They discussed how they could cut expenses. 'Sweet thing,' the man said, 'if you'd learn how to fix meals, we could fire the cook.' The wife says, 'Well, dear, if you'd learn how to fuck, we could fire the gardener...'"

Lao-Tze waited patiently for the laugh that didn't come. He sighed. "But mostly my great and good friends, the trees. You, by the way, were more than a little rude as you came along, breaking off one of Bob's branches which happened to brush your face, and without so much as a by-your-leave."

Thus was born the new religion of arborism, for this person returned to the valley and, writing furiously, soon created the well-known "Tree Scripture According to Lao-Tze," and then quickly founded a church in Berkeley which has now spread to all the continents.