I don't consider myself a religious person, and I've never given much credit to miracles or saintly apparitions. To me magic is truly "smoke and mirrors" and ghosts, goblins, and ghouls are just products of people's over active imagination. Humans began creating myths before they even invented a written (or maybe even spoken) language, as attested by the carvings in bone and stone of gods and daemons by prehistoric peoples. After I read the four volumes of Joseph Campbell's "The Mask of God," the mysticism of religion's dogma was reduced, and rightfully so, to a plethora of universally adopted and adapted symbols, which are probably the only things all of us on this planet share and have in common. I am a strong believer in the findings of comparative mythology. I write all of the above to assure the reader that I am not one to fall under the sway of "the unexplained", or "powers we cannot phantom," and the like. If not a ...

Have you ever heard a song that made you feel a strange nostalgia for a time and place that you couldn't have possibly known? Many years ago, I was sitting at the bar of a New York nightclub that was in a basement much like the original Stage Door Canteen had been during WWII. I was having a drink before going to see a play in a 44th Street theater, I forget what the play was. The place was very much like the Stage Door Canteen had been, at least it resembled the photographs I had seen that dated from the time of the War. Like the Stage Door Canteen, this place also had a small stage tucked away in a corner and simple tables and booths that filled the roughly 40 by 80 feet of space which was the same amount of space the Stage Door Canteen had had. In spite of the fact that the barman told me that the place has recently opened, it had an old-fashioned atmosphere, and was smokey (people still smoked in enclosed spaces in those days) and noisy as the Stage Door Canteen must have...

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.   Gilbert K. Chesterton There's nothing like a bit of adverse adventure to get to know a city. Want to know what a city is like for those who live there? Get into trouble. We went out to dinner, that first night I was in Paris. The restaurant was on the Rue Croix des Petits Champs. It is probably not there anymore. It was a bistro, with small tables and a smokey atmosphere (they used to smoke in restaurants in those day) but, the food was very good. It was a cheerful dinner. My friend had invited people that were in rehearsals with her in Peter Brook's adaptation of The Mahabharata, with a script by the famous Jean-Claude Carriere. So, the conversation was lively in French, Spanish, and English. One of the actors who was Greek, sang and Jean-Claude told funny stories about the time when he worked with Luis Buñuel in films such as "Belle de Jour." After the dinner ended, I walked...