My Library

It was thus that I dared to go beyond -- for there was a sustaining, derring-do excitement about it. Pursuit of this derring-do was assisted by a very important factor. I located to Manhattan (after the Army in 1958) as soon as it was possible to do so. The basis for this move had to do with my art and painting. But one of the by-products was escape from conventional overloads usually present almost everywhere else in this great nation. And it was in that cosmopolitan, culturally rich metropolis that I found myself completely free to pursue my derring-dos regarding mind improving. There is, I think, a basic "secret" to mind improving -- to know a lot about a lot of things, as perhaps distinguished from knowing a somewhat little about a few things. This was not a problem to me, for I was a bookworm anyway. But in New York were large or small groups constellated around every possible topic or subject or behavior, some of which have never been considered in book formats. And I could study and interact with them first-hand -- groups ranging from the gutter on upwards into the high ethereal aspects of thinking. And without reservation I can say that my years between 1958 and 1972 were the happiest ones of my life. After that things got increasingly complex and complicated with stresses of all kinds.