I sent this letter to my cousin in Copenhagen. She and I went to the early grades of elementary school together and were constant companions early in our lives.

"I seem to remember that long before I considered whether life had any meaning, I found that most everything was humorous. I remember mocking all that was serious and taking great pleasure in being able to make you laugh, knowing that you shared in this sense of sillyness. Adults in my life (except for your dad, which is why I loved him more than any of my uncles) always made life seem so serious.

These thoughts have surfaced, because just before going to bed I began yet another book (I must be reading 7 or 8, not including the stuff I must read for my Masters....multi-tasking or attention deficit disorder?), Woody Allen and Philosophy, essays about Woody Allen's movies and the philosophies that underlie his writing, edited by Mark T. Conrad and Aeon J. Skoble.

Deep shit, but with humorous underpinnings.

I appreciate your recent email about what you are involved in. Sometime, I'd like you to share with me some of the social graces you have learned and some of the funny thoughts that I know must have played inside your head as you mixed with royalty, CEOs, and government leaders. Knowing that they all are pretenders to the throne, which is really located in our souls, somewhere just around the corner in a little all-night cafe in the Twilight Zone."