I skipped the entire month of July because I was busy living. During that time it occurred to me that I have learned quite a lot of useful stuff that won't earn me a red cent, yet I find I may well be the wealthiest man alive.

I will share my ripe July wisdom:

You can only go halfway into the woods. Beyond that point you are on your way out of the woods. 

You can push a doctor around if you're right. 

Love without sex is still love. Sex without love is nothing but a momentary distraction from the lack of love.

If I cannot be true to myself, if I am willing to settle for relief of aloneness instead of waiting for the real thing, then I have been unfaithful in the worst possible way and cannot be trusted with anything. So I remain true to myself. 

I actually can write well. Now I need to learn how to accept the compliments that brings about, and to fully enjoy having my breath taken away when someone I consider brilliant tells me I am brilliant

Hate, like weird clothing, goes in and out of fashion periodically, and for the same reasons.

Love, like nakedness, underlies everything else we put on.

While Dorothy Parker was right about ugly going "straight to the bone," she was wrong about beauty being skin deep. It actually comes from some thus far undetermined source deep inside, and emanates outward in the form of light, so that when a truly beautiful person walks into a room, speaks, or merely appears, a light comes on and everything becomes clear.

If I were required to relinquish one of my senses, it would definitely be my eyesight. Not my vision, which cannot be  taken anyway, but my eyesight. 

Music is silences connected by sounds.

The best treatment for Menier's disease, which causes ringing in the ears, violent vertigo, and sometimes nausea, can be medically managed by use of a diuretic. 

I have learned the meaning of the phrase "peeing like a racehorse."

The more aptitude one has at something unusual, the more people will expect you to do that unusual thing for less and less compensation, so you'd better love your aptitude or keep it to yourself.

Isaac Newtons's law of gravity works horizontally as well as vertically. I've been drawn sideways by the gravitational pull of a beautiful woman. This does not require medical treatment and cannot be prevented. It is like sailing into the sun.

I learned, at last, what my father meant when trying to explain why Freemasonry is conveyed in 32 degrees. He said, when I was much younger and knew everything, "Just because you can add and subtract doesn't mean you can solve calculus problems." 

I learned one can survive eight days in Los Angeles without being able to drive, but the average income of cabbies goes up exponentially on each day. 

I learned there is at least one person in Los Angeles who cares enough about me to not let a bunch of cabbies get rich at my expense, but still managed to walk off several pounds and enjoyed the alone time the TSA gave me by stealing my driver's license.

I learned that a driver's license takes seven and one half days to get from Baltimore to Los Angeles via USPS.

I learned there are crop circles somewhere in one of the square states that look like Pac Man.

Home actually is where the heart is, even if it's a stale old bromide. It's true. 

I learned, only tonight, that the full moon still inspires feelings in me that cannot be explained, and by extension that the more I learn, the more I realize I do not and never will know; and that knowlege of what I do not know, the vastness of it, the infinitude of unknown possibilities, draws me toward the soft light that emanates from somewhere off in the distance, and that being, despite my bottomless ignorance, holds new beauty, wonders and love to be discovered daily, and that my wealth lies in what comes toward me when I move toward the blue horizon, where I ache to live and move and have my being.

I learned a lot in the past month. I know very little, now, yet I am more certain than I have ever been, because of July. I will expect no less from every month, every day, every year, for the rest of my life. 

Then the mystery begins.