Never know what's just around the corner. Woke up this morning, brewed up a pot of coffee, turned on the radio and listened to a Vietnam Vet describe his experiences in a foreign land. 20 years of nightmares, led him to become a writer.

He became a Buddhist, and Buddhism taught him that instead of 'getting over' his experience, his wounding, he had become something new. He embraced his wound; and by embracing, he became a writer, a poet.

Later, he and his wife adopted a Vietnamese child. Nightmares of a napalmed girl never went away, but by writing about her, by exploring her death in his imagination, by giving the girl wings and then taking them away, he had incorporated her into himself.

Light and shadow, war and peace; the dichotomy, this is man.