Once I Climbed Into A

There Often Seems To Be A Playfulness To Wise People, As If Either Their Equanimity Has As Its Source This Playfulness Or The Playfulness Flows From Equanimity; And They Can Persuade Other People Who Are In A State Of Agitation To Calm Down And Smile.

In Order To Really Enjoy A Dog, One Doesn't Merely Try To Train Him To Be Semi-human. The Point Of It Is To Open Oneself To The Possibility Of Becoming Partly A Dog.

We New Yorkers See More Death And Violence Than Most Soldiers Do, Grow A Thick Chitin On Our Backs, Grimace Like A Rat And Learn To Do A Disappearing Act. Long Ago We Outgrew The Need To Be Blowhards About Our Masculinity; We Leave That To The Alaskans And Texans, Who Have More Time For It.

It's Incongruous That The Older We Get, The More Likely We Are To Turn In The Direction Of Religion. Less Vivid And Intense Ourselves, Closer To The Grave, We Begin To Conceive Of Ourselves As Immortal.

Animals Are Stylized Characters In A Kind Of Old Saga - Stylized Because Even The Most Acute Of Them Have Little Leeway As They Play Out Their Parts.