How can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointment can bring?

Our world isn't made of earth, air and water or even molecules and atoms; our world is made of language.

According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the kali yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening. Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth.

Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen.

The scientist keeps the romantic honest, and the romantic keeps the scientist human.