People often ask "what’s the ‘K" stand for?"

Sometimes I say "The K stands for liberty, equality, siblinghood, beautiful music and harmony, what do you stand for?"

Sometimes I say "Why do you ask, would you like to write out a check to me?" (smiling sweetly, of course, so they’ll know I’m joking.)

Sometimes I sing a bit from a Bonnie Raitt tune: "Let’s give ‘em something to talk about/ A little mystery to figure out/ Let’s give ‘em something to talk about,/ How about Love, Love, Love?"

I like Bonnie. She’s a woman with spunk and spirit, and like many popular musicians, she sings about Love alot: about it sneaking up on you (but not in a bad, scary way, just… well, the way Love can overwhelm you when you least expect it), about finding it in the nick of time, about it being a powerful thing, about writing it down in letters (though not a thousand feet high, my pen’s not as big as Sir’s). Like me, she’s an artist it’s hard to categorize: some of her stuff sounds country-western (or country-pop), most of it is bluesy, but once you get to know her stuff you can tell it’s her when you hear another, even in a completely different genre. She’s an original blend.

The thing about crossing categories, though, it can make it even harder than it is already for artists to succeed financially: stores (music, book or whatever) don’t quite know where to put your works, customers don’t quite know where to look. Well, even if you look in bookstores for my stuff, you won’t find it; after years of saying I wanted to be a writer, and being annoyed at people who said "writers write, why aren’t you writing?", in the last year or so I’ve been unable to do much else but write (I dabble in some visual arts and crafts as well). Still no publisher but the internet (which is not making *me* any money, though it has for many others), no agent, but the very best inspiration anyone could want, and the things I post here are gifts I transmit to the world in the hope that they will help soothe its troubles; peace would be as rich a reward as I could ask for these efforts, and sometimes when I look at what’s going on I think "the world can’t wait, it needs to hear this now. I can’t give *everything* away — I’m afraid I’m not as confident in Providence as Claire of Assisi was, and though I do try to emulate Francis I am besieged sometimes by fits of ill temper — but I do eventually hope to get together some book proposals and do the whole publishing-for-pay thing…