Advice to The Younger Self

TAKE THE WORLD AND YOUR part in it seriously, but not yourself.
Never refuse anything offered, but be careful about entanglements.
You’ll need computer skills, but you’ll also enjoy them.
Write.
Stake out early your points of honor.
Dream. Then write it down.
Hold on to your comic books, graphic novels, ephemera and trading cards. (Science fiction will be some seriously big business in a few years.)

Pithyism #36

IF A PREGNANT WOMAN ASKS you for anything — and I mean anything, no matter how odd-sounding or inconvenient — give it to her immediately or sooner. (This rule does not necessarily apply to any other human situation.)

Punch-drunk Piety

WE ARE THE WRESTLERS-WITH-God,
the ones grabbing His lapels and hollering “Speak up, sonny!”
and don’t worry about staining the carpets.

And we like It that way.

You who put God on a shelf
Who pull Him out once or twice a year to look at and sigh over
Who wrap Him in chains of fear and “can’t”
Ought to be ashamed of yourselves
For not knowing all the Fun you’re missing.

Thumbs Up

THE PACK ON YOUR BACK is both reassuring and cumbersome for what seems the third hour of shadeless noon as you think at a passing car, “This one will definitely stop.”

(Actually, if it were really three hours you’d have slumped your pack against your knee, or at your feet, or otherwise at ease, but within grabbing distance since it literally contains everything you own — and the territory is much, much, MUCH bigger than than the map. Besides, that way it’s easier to hold a sign reading, say, “Reno” or “I Know A Joke.”)

It’s been more than two dozen years since I set forth on my first hitchhiking trip (of four)

Aside

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU are reading this?

Pithyism #210

RELIGION, OR AT LEAST JEWISH religion, and certainly a root cause of religion’s comfort, appeal and danger, is simply and little more than people doing what they like to do in the way they like and feel compelled to do it.