This is not an autobiography, but rather a book about excursions onto paths adjacent to the main route. Ordinary events become transparent and you're aware of something else, something you can't quite describe and yet something as clear as a glass of water on the table. The stories on these pages attempt to communicate this wonder that sometimes appears in quite ordinary circumstances. This is a chronicle of my experience-all of the people and places described here are real. I've provided descriptions of particulars so that their universality may illumine your experience too. These jottings are not simply descriptive. An "objective" historian might have some difficulty with them. They are events-as-I-saw-them, and in that sense, they are "internal" history.