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GRAVEL

21.  Life, without exception, is a series of events, and anything that's alive drinks in impressions of those events. A human being has a further capacity. A person can learn to step aside and understand their own machinery. This is a huge advantage. You're trembling with fear, yet you crouch down and kill the tiger! I've spent some time learning the art of inner replacement. Something on the inside bugging you? You replace it with something else ... something of your own choosing. It helps to have a sound philosophy of what to replace things with. Myself, I tend to work towards my own childhood to find out what's REALLY bothering me. Yesterday, as I was preparing to continue reading The Leopard, a novel by the Norwegian mystery writer Jo Nesbø, which is turning out to be a little gruesome, a part of my mind suggested I turn instead to Advice from a Failure, by Jo Coudert, a "self-help book for very intelligent people." She's an expert at replacing one thing in your mind with another. Not that my own mind is a slouch at these things: It did, after all, have me replace one Jo for another!