If There Is Magic On This Planet,

Every Time We Walk Along A Beach Some Ancient Urge Disturbs Us So That We Find Ourselves Shedding Shoes And Garments Or Scavenging Among Seaweed And Whitened Timbers Like The Homesick Refugees Of A Long War... Mostly The Animals Understand Their Roles, But Man, By Comparison, Seems Troubled By A Message That, It Is Often Said, He Cannot Quite Remember Or Has Gotten Wrong... Bereft Of Instinct, He Must Search Continually For Meanings... Man Was A Reader Before He Became A Writer, A Reader Of What Coleridge Once Called The Mighty Alphabet Of The Universe.

It Has Been Asserted That We Are Destined To Know The Dark Beyond The Stars Before We Comprehend The Nature Of Our Own Journey.

If You Cannot Bear The Silence And The Darkness, Do Not Go There; If You Dislike Black Night And Yawning Chasms, Never Make Them Your Profession. If You Fear The Sound Of Water Hurrying Through Crevices Toward Unknown And Mysterious Destinations, Do Not Consider It. Seek Out The Sunshine. It Is A Simple Prescription. Avoid The Darkness.

It Is Frequently The Tragedy Of The Great Artist For Example Vincent Van Gogh, As It Is Of The Great Scientist, That He Frightens The Ordinary Man. If He Is More Than A Popular Story-teller It May Take Humanity A Generation To Absorb And Grow Accustomed To The New Geography With Which The Scientist Or Artist Presents Us. Even Then, Perhaps Only The More Imaginative And Literate May Accept Him. Subconsciously The Genius Is Feared As An Image Breaker; Frequently He Does Not Accept The Opinions Of The Mass, Or Man's Opinion Of Himself.

Each One Of Us Is A Statistical Impossibility Around Which Hover A Million Other Lives That Were Never Destined To Be Born.