I received in the week's mail wonderful used books I ordered with my Christmas gift-certificate from faraway sister-in-law--Kerouac's collected letters in hardcover, two volumes, and Milan Kundera Art of the Novel and Kafka's diaries in paperback. I have to keep my head in it to keep going, in the cloud of words to remember.

My sculptor friend from Yolo (down in the valley near Sacramento) phoned to say he is bringing me an old trailer to park out back and write in. Long all-day drive up a mountain to gift me this miracle. Just like that. Oh that white-light meditation. It knows just what to do.

" ... The philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed a theory to explain how outer events in our lives coincide with our inner development in a grand expression of 'pre-established harmony.'" -- Ray Grasse, Waking Dream

It's the eleventh hour of evening on the anniversary of the day of my birth, 27 December, when my mother bore me forth on a gurney in the Berkeley Medical Center assisted by a military doctor, she--my mother--only 19 and my 19-year-old sailor dad pacing in the waiting room or wherever it was men paced back then.

This day my birthday morning I lucked into the vein of my book and caught in the current flowed forth for hours. High with it, and happy.