Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man is my all-time favourite song. I heard it for the first time in about 1964 or '65, when my sister Laraine was on a Spring break from college. It was her second semester of college, I think, and after a stifling youth in the cool but conservative suburb… Continue

It's Wednesday. When I started this blog (brainwaves books and stuff), I promised myself I would write at least one post every weekend. I'd like to write more. Stuff gets crammed in my head and heart that's just dying to get out and this is my outlet. However, it's Wednesday and I didn't write anything over the weekend. Instead I wrote blogs and articles for a pittance for other people.



Here are some of the topics I wrote about over… Continue

I've been going through a personal crisis lately. I won't bore you with the details, but I would like to share an experience I had this morning with you.



Every morning when I wake up, I practice a little mental trick that often works brilliantly, as it did this morning.… Continue

I love to tell this story because it captures the spirit of the real Dharma, the spirit of surrender. We are all so busy trying to overcome our problems and get rid of suffering that we miss the simple solution right before us. But the solution is not one the ego likes. Surrender is something the ego cannot do.

Rama was a Hindu Avatar, a god-man. Krishna is the most famous of the Hindu Avatars but Rama actually preceded him by 5,000 years. Rama was a hunter figure who lived in

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I've just finished writing an article about "self acceptance and personal growth." One of the things I like about the company I write for is that they are demanding. It gets tedious, because I like to let my imagination run riot, but it's good discipline. I have to do careful research and cite credible sources. In this case, my research took me to Abraha… Continue

I make my living writing articles, blogs, product reviews, product descriptions and other internet content. I've been doing this for about a year and now have several regular sources of income. My clients can be roughly divided into two camps - those who primarily want quality, descriptive content and those who want SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content. Although the former pay at least twice as much per word as the latter, I make roughly about the same per hour from each, because little rese… Continue

2012 needs no introduction. As our collective anxiety over climate change, the dicey economic situation and the real or imagined threat of terrorism grows, even those of us who previously wrote it off as the ravings of stoners and conspiracy theorists are beginning to wonder if perhaps the Mayans were on to something after all… Continue

When I heard that J.D. Salinger died a couple of weeks ago (on January 27), the news didn't sadden me so much as it brought back a flood of memories. Like the majority of his readers, my introduction to his work was in an English Lit. class, when I had to read The… Continue

A strange confluence of events (serendipity? synchronicity?) has compelled me to write this blog entry. It all started a couple of weeks ago when I was given an assignment to write a series of articles about anime. All I knew about anime when I began my research was that it was Japanese for

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