If I was a doctor who wrote a book, I might tack the MD or Phd after my name on the cover, or in various contexts set up power objects, totems of tradition to "add value," lend archaic authorization to my image and message: office, lab coat, clipboard, "Apollonian" furniture etc. Though not a doctor in that style, I too would like to introduce myself to you with a picture, a tag, a brand of my tradition and its archaic authority. Which artifacts may serve as useful familiars (social statements) for the democrat, the nomad, the shaman, the Khidr? What equals "office" furniture and framed diplomas to the Dreamers, the Wanderers, the Outsiders, the Barbarians, the Bohemians, the Freelancers, Free and Rebooters, the Kibitzers, the Moonlighters? The polytheists and pantheists, the relativists? The cryptozoic, saprophytic and stenochoric? Nietzsche wrote, "out of you who have chosen yourselves shall grow a chosen people"--and despite farflung heterogeneity, there is nothing to prevent the archaic authority of that category "tradition" from certifying this lineage. As democrat and individual, and especially as child of Technology, grandchild of the Rational Enlightenment, great grandchild of the Renaissance during which these eras were named and categorized, I am scion of an ancient line: I want to illustrate this arborescent dynasty briefly in my introductory picture because I don't want you to think I just dropped out of the sky. I am not an alien, but an old earthling, an old earthworm who gathered sparks together.

Odd men, odd women out, in, out, in, out, in. Defined by what we were not, bagged by "authoritarians" of various institutions, we were Laity, Amateurs, Civilians, Citizens, Deviants, Democrats, Rogues, Renegades, Dilettantes, Iconoclasts, Subversives, Dissidents, Anarchists, Fugitives, Truants, Green Monkeys, Heretics, Infidels, Lumpen, Manqué, Emeritus. Pagan. Emergent "Secondary Cultural Processes" followed some of us away from oppressive organizations until inertia slowed them into institutions and dogmas of their own. Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Alchemy, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Wicca… No isms, institutions or dogmas for us. Our gods were the far wee gods--gypsy gods who lived not in monstrous mansions, but in tiny tents in the open air--random, interstitial, spontaneous, marginal, transitional.

We are lucky to live in a society that offers free education to the privileged. To those, that is, who choose to educate themselves. Books are all over the place now!

This is a selection of my papers for my courses. 12 years of education after a break of 12 years from 14 years in institutions called schooling. In the high school Skola in Paidea, my anti- or (s)un-Thesis. Also my mid-term. How I spent my long summer, winter, spring and autumn holidays.