Queen Anne Hill - Seattle, Washington
The beginning of August, 2010

First of all, a large Thank You! to those who responded to my recent request to buy a copy of Third Wish. The novel had quite a sales bounce at Amazon.
(Here’s an easy link to Third Wish on Amazon.) The first word is a clue to how to approach it. “Slowly . . .”

Someone asked me if I had any idea how many people might have seen my request. I didn’t know or even know how to know. But you can know - if you are web-savvy. So I asked a web-master to check. Answer: 54,253 visits - representing 36,844 unique visitors - from different 97 countries, including one visit each from places like Iran, Burma, and Pakistan.

Surprised and dismayed am I.

Now, some blogs, I am told, get hundreds of thousands of hits a day, and some sites have unique visitors in the millions. But it’s not a competition.
And I would have been satisfied just to know that several hundred people read what’s posted here from time to time. But 36,844? That’s still a lot.

To know what I know now makes me nervous, but also pleased. And I will use what I know to remind myself to keep writing at those times when I wonder if anybody notices.
So, then, 36,844 thanks.
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My mind is like a trusty old horse - one I’ve ridden long and far and wide. Sometimes I drop the reins for awhile and let the horse wander where it will, especially in the company of friends who also let go of the reins.
Here’s an example:

LEAK WEEK

Leakage has dominated the world village conversation this past week.
Gazillions of gallons of oil have leaked from the failed BP well down at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The well is capped, but the area still leaks.
90,000 pages of classified battlefield intelligence have been leaked from Afghanistan through Wikileak.
The Mexican border is leaking drugs and guns and illegal immigrants.
These are the big ones - the mega-leaks.

The rear shock absorbers on my car are leaking.
The water hose connection in my yard is leaking.
The faucet in my shower leaks, also.
My nose is leaking from chronic allergic reaction to grass pollen.
And I am leaking energy every afternoon around four o’clock.
These are the little ones - the mini-leaks.

But there’s even more startling news.
The headline on the July issue of the magazine, Scientific American, says:
THE UNIVERSE IS LEAKING.
Oh, No!
A cosmic leak.
Yes!
This is just way too much leaking.

Astronomers have noticed that light seems to lose energy as it crosses the cosmos, apparently breaking the laws of physics. The rule is that total energy must be conserved - neither created nor destroyed.
But there is some evidence that this may not be true after all.
Energy may be leaking out of our universe.

Speculation from science and religion has suggested that the world may come to an end through fire . . . or ice . . . or flood . . . or comet collision.
And now? Leakage?
Everything will be slowly sucked down the drain of infinity into oblivion.

Actually, this possibility is nothing new. Fear not. It is the Way of the Tao.
The Ding-Dong Dynasty Chinese sage, Whoo-Ha, addressed this long ago.

Intuiting the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of entropy, he said, “The universe and all its entities is made of the same substance, called goo, which is always in motion, and seeks to be at rest.”

“What is filled wants to be empty, what is there wants to be here, what is wants as it is. Restlessness is the nature of all things. Rest is its desire. The wise man responds by resting, thus creating harmony in his mind and body, and contributing to the ultimate state of the world.”

Woo-ha may have been a whack-a-doodle, but he lived a long time.
It is said that he did not die, but only concentrated on leaking away into ultimate transformative nothing-ness.
And succeeded.
Which explains why nobody every heard of him.
Now you know.
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Blame this on the un-reined horse.
Though what can be imagined can come true. It’s happened.
And every time a loony thought happens, an evil thought is displaced.