I’ve been an avid reader since childhood. My earliest favorites as a kid in the 60s included Animal Farm, Catch-22, The Catcher in the Rye, and Slaughterhouse-Five. As a teenager, I discovered Mark Twain and, later, the Beat writers, particularly Kerouac and Ginsberg. I loved the novels of Tom Robbins and John Irving. I particularly loved the hilarious and absurd – yet remarkably insightful and righteously patriotic – work of Hunter S. Thompson. Given the rampant psychedelic adventuring in Marin County in the 70s, I read Carlos Castaneda’s tales of Mexican Indian sorcery with wide eyes. Later, I discovered the brilliant fiction and non-fiction of Peter Matthiessen and the gripping story-telling of Larry McMurtry and Margaret Atwood. Majoring in American and Latin American History at Berkeley, I was lucky to be assigned the writings of the greatest American thinkers, as well as the likes of Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I always loved to write, from my first diary as a kid in New Jersey, to journals I kept during travels, to correspondence with friends, through my school assignments. Many teachers strongly encouraged me, though often lamented that while my writing was funny, well done, and intelligent, I had not actually done any of it until the night before the project was due: an unfortunate and apparently unshakable tendency. I was proud that my senior thesis at Berkeley, on the history of the treaties between the Americans and the Navajos in the mid-19th century, won a prize as the best history of the year on the American West.

But instead of pursuing a career as a writer, I became a lawyer.  It was semi-respectable, supported a family of five in Marin County, and took good advantage of my abilities as a writer. But litigation steadily sapped my spirit and helped push me toward a crisis that challenges me and leads me back to a truer path.

The writing here is part of my journey. Thanks for coming along for the ride.