As I go through life I often see strange marks on the foreheads of most everyone I meet, including the fellow I meet in the mirror each day. I think these marks are trying to remind me of something . . . but I can't quite put my finger on it. This book of essays is my attempt to put a finger on a few things.

I think of myself as a natural philosopher. This is not a boast, it's more of a confession. I tend to go through life not seeing the colors of the leaves or smelling the scents of the morning air or tasting the richness of the earth. I tend usually to see everything as expressions of various abstract ideas. I meet someone and I can't for the life of me remember their name by the third sentence of our conversation, or the color of their eyes the minute they turn away, or what clothes they were wearing; but something they say might start me to thinking about the philosophical assumptions implicit in some stray remark, and off I go, and that's the only aspect of our meeting that holds any interest for me. And so my book is the story of my mostly bloodless encounters with life, of some everyday events and some extraordinary events and the thoughts they provoked me to think.

These thoughts I have been provoked to think have been collected and written down over more than a decade, so they tend to jump around in time quite a bit. Some of this will be transparent to the reader, some of it may be annoying. Sorry, but it can't be helped. Some of these thoughts also now seem embarrassingly quaint, even foolish--like looking at one's photograph in the high school yearbook. I have resisted the temptation to redact myself into a more presentable form in the hope that some reader in some lost corner somewhere may still benefit from even old ideas.

Also, as a philosopher, I feel some professional obligation to say something about the matter of Truth, since this is traditionally one of the main things philosophers are supposed to be very serious about. So here goes . . .

First off, you should understand that everything in this book is simply made-up. Not in the sense of knowingly untrue, but in that I have no real idea whether any of it is true or not. Don't get me wrong, the events described did happen, and I've described them as close as I can to how they happened. But if there is anything of interest here, it is the spin I've put on things--in other words, whatever it is which makes this a species of writing, as distinct from such honorable professions as court-reporting. And it is this other, more dubious, art that is being marketed here.

If I learned anything during my years as a student of philosophy and science, it is that all our little models of reality--mine and Einstein's and everyone else's--are just conjectures, plausible until further notice. And although I try to serve as a compelling advocate for my views, just to make the game interesting, I am not trying to teach you anything, or sell you anything, or convert you to any point of view. I do not share the fashionable delusion of the various fundamentalist revivals, which hold that everyone must believe just the right set of things in order for God to be at peace. I suspect God doesn't give a fig either way.

And I must admit something about why I have written this book. I have written all this for the sole and sufficient reason that the process of writing often brings me intoxicating pleasure. Moments of sweet bliss when a line comes unbidden, a line that seems just right--inspired even. Such moments produce a sense of connectedness which I long to feel.

How then should the reader approach this material? Well, first off, not terribly seriously I hope. Some serious matters are touched upon, but I have always found seriousness to be a hindrance in trying to understand them. I would suggest that you only seek your own pleasures in the reading, as I have done in the writing, and to bump up against these thoughts which have been provoked in me and see what thoughts they provoke in you.

I must tell you about one other thing I believe to be true but don't really know for sure, and that is that we are all already infinitely wise. That we all somehow already know all the answers, already know what is true and what is not. We seem to be involved here on this earth in a kind of conspiracy of forgetting, trying very hard to notice less that we do. Dulling our awareness in manifold ways so we can go on pretending not to know.

So, often as not, when we hear some little piece of the truth we know immediately that it is what it is, some little piece of the truth. It has the ring about it. The feel. The shine. And bullshit is just bullshit, and we know it. So it's really no big problem to figure our what's true and what's not. We only get puzzled when something that our intellect tells us should be true, is in conflict with what our insides tell us is really the case.

What I suggest then is this: If what I say here causes that feeling in you of "Yes, that's exactly how it is," well then, run it through and see if it may be of some use to you. If it lacks that feeling then just let it pass, it's not important.