To My Mice: You never know what life may require of you,

but you are the heirs to this strength and courage.

No need to go looking for a fight.

Sometimes it finds you.

And if so, don't worry - you'll know what to do.

Let me report I understand this:

If you don't hold a golf club correctly, you will not swing it right.

You gotta start at the beginning.

By 16 I had hit people and been hit.

Once, winning a skirmish, I was in position to truly hurt a person.

Onlookers were looking for a ferocious beating.

I reckoned it's one thing to make a point - another thing to inflict injury just because you can.

It's midnight and I am stuffing my face with almond butter I made when I was conscious.

My body unreasonably insists on eating.

I was 100% certain these things would make me happy.

Why?

When you want to lift weight over-head,

keep the load balanced over the middle of your feet-

because that's how the body works.

It is not arbitrary. Not capricious.

It's a rule because it is the best course of action.

The cycle of life is gritty, no?

I am a thinker. At least, I think I am.

I don't relax well.

Once, for a moment on soft grass above the fat sea lions of La Jolla, I breathed easy.

Sprawled out on the ground, my daughters kept a look-out for the cutest boy on the beach.

My eyes closed, a pelican shat right on my chest.

Not a dainty pigeon poop- an earthy, full-bodied excrement bomb.

My ten bucks was a selfish, irrational insurance policy against a lack of prosperity in 2013.

By accident and grace, I have been delivered from most problems of the world.

People will not be controlled for long.

They will enjoy whatever strikes them, and it is foolishness to think you can make it otherwise.

Last Saturday, on a very ordinary street in Phoenix,

I saw a rooster.

Out of nowhere.

Apropos of nothing.