Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself***z-headeradsense*** On February 9, 1964 I sat in front of the family's black and white Philco TV and watched the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. A seismic shift took place in my psyche and right then and there I abandoned my childish fantasy of becoming a professional baseball player and rededicated my life to rock stardom. Several weeks later my older brothers returned home from college for a weekend and presented me with my first guitar. They'd paid the owner $7 and a six-pack of Old Milwaukee beer and he undoubtedly got the better part of the deal. If that guitar had been a car it would have been up on blocks in the front yard of a trailer plot in rural Mississippi. But with the help of Mel Bay and a Beatles songbook I quickly learned all the major and minor chords and was able to play and sing "I Shoulda Known Better" over the phone to Carol and Ann. I was far too timid to sing in front of my parents but I did once proudly strum the chords for a Beatle's tune for them during cocktail hour. When I finished they looked quizzically at one another, offered a half-hearted compliment and returned to their martinis. In my household music was for listening, not playing. Years later I traded a scuba tank and regulator to my brother for a high-end Polaroid camera and a bunch of film. He worked for the company so I suspect in monetary terms he was out little or nothing. But I loved that camera and the images I could make with it.  While a sophomore in college my father presented me with a $1000
life insurance policy my mother had taken out on me in the early 50's, paying the agent 25 cents a week until it was
paid in full. I wasted no time redeeming it for its cash value of $370 and purchasing a 1971 Nikon F camera that became
my constant companion and best friend for the remainder of my college career; I still own it.In each of these incidents, and many more like them, I abandoned something I thought was meaningful to me (or at least should have been in the case of the insurance policy) for something that allowed me to create. I learned a couple of things: first, I was a pretty good creator. And second, when I was creating I was happier than when I was not. But despite these two pretty apparent clues as to how I should go about making a living, creativity did not enter into the equation; at least not until now. For a number of reasons I did not follow my calling. Lack of confidence, shattered self image, the desperate need for love and admiration were all contributors to my
betrayal of my "inner nature". And to the extent that I lived those lies my happiness and fulfillment suffered
and my inner voices cried out for recognition. This site, and "Conversations with Katherine", the book that servers
as its foundation, are the manifestations of those cries and the beginning of my life as it was meant to be lived.
What changed? I began by writing words, then sentences, then paragraphs.
I wrote a short story, began keeping a journal and wrote 54,000 words about watching my father die of lung cancer.
I did not try to make things happen, I just wrote with the faith that the right word would come to me at the right
time--and it always did. Return Home You can also find me at these fine cyber-establishments:    | ***z-affiladsright.shtml*** | |
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Almost serendipitously events began taking place
that served as steps to the next necessary insight or lesson in my trek. New doors opened, old ones closed.
What I found behind those doors was often painful but always the pain brought wisdom. And then one day, with no
warning whatsoever, the wall that stood between me and my destiny crumbled. That one thing that had prevented me from
doing what I knew I must do was gone. You'll find what it was in chapter 16.