I have been thinking over the past day about a very interesting question someone asked me concerning whether I had any regrets in my lifetime.

There was one time in my life when I had a very, very difficult choice to make.

Looking back now, after many many years, I still would make the same decision as I made at that time.

So, not only did I think I was making the right choice at that time, many years ago, but I also think upon looking back, that it was the better choice.

Here was the situation surrounding the choice I had to make. After graduate school, I figured my best course at this point was to go to New York City and get a good job and see how I liked it and how it worked out.

I quickly got a position at an industrial psychologist for one of the top five companies in the U.S.

I spend most of my time reading magazines and overworking the pool secretaries on letters most of which were of little consequence.

I was really bored and knew I couldn't follow this course for my life, although it meant almost sure-fire security and advancement up the ladder and quite soon I would be making a great deal of money.  At the time, I was only about 26 or so and I was at an equal level with the other two gentlemen in my workplace who were 35 and 40 years old.

So, I really had a great head-start and a great future with a top company. After two years, I came to the conclusion that this just wasn't the life for me, no matter how perfect it might seem to just about anybody else.

Just a couple years before, while I was in school, I won the "Best College Writing" contest run by "Story" magazine and edited by the famous teacher and writer, Whit Burnett.

So, after two years in New York, I came back to Gainesville, Florida and started writing, mostly poetry and short stories.

I had no firm idea at that time for a novel which would be the next logical step, as I had the backing of both of my creative writing professors, Elliot Coleman at Johns Hopkins and Smith Kirkpatrick at the University of Florida. Plus, I was strongly encouraged to immediately write a novel by Whit Burnett as he would strongly give me his backing and support if I were to write a novel.

I can't overemphasize the importance of winning that national short story contest which was open to all college students, plus the backing of such an important literary expert at Whit Burnett.

So, my idea at that time, was to continue writing poetry and short stories until I could get a firm concept for a novel and then definitely begin writing that.

At this point, the biggest decision of my life presented itself and I had to make a choice of one or the other.

First, there was this opportunity to write my novel as I was encouraged by Whit Burnett who was such a dominate figure in the writing world at that time. He discovered and published the very first stories of future famous writers such as Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger, and a host of others. He seemed to have a great knack for discovering great American writers. So, I had that clear mandate.

At the very same time, my mother bought a house with an acre of land in Melrose, Florida which was twenty miles directly east of Gainesville and the University of Florida on Route 26.

My mother strongly urged me to cut expenses while writing my novel, and move in with her and her sister, as the house was practically a two-story mansion.

And there was a beautiful lake within a half a block. My mother also gave me free reign if I wanted to start an animal and reptile ranch on her property and live there.

My mother loved animals and had no qualms about reptiles as I wanted reptiles to be an important part of the animal ranch. So, at this point I had to make my biggest decision which was probably the most important and difficult one I ever had to make.

I could live rent-free and complete my novel, hopefully, while I was still supported by Whit Burnett, or I could move in with my mother and start an animal and reptile ranch with the idea not only of breeding animals and reptiles but of being able to make a living at it.

I would sell both retail and wholesale, shipping animals and reptiles to other pet shops around the U.S. There was no animal and reptile business within hundreds of miles of Gainesville.

What there was was ordinary pet shops which sold mainly dogs, cats, and fish. So, I would have no competition for hundreds of miles.

I was married at the time with a young child, and I knew that my wife would agree with whatever choice I would make. At this time, it was completely unknown to me or anyone else whether I could make a profitable business out of selling only wild animals and reptiles as pets.

So there was that challenge but there was also the danger of wasting a lot of time if my business failed and passing up the immediate opportunity to write a novel and maybe launch my serious writing career with the support of Whit Burnett in New York.

This turned out to be (and I didn't know it at the time) the most important decision of my life. In either case, I would be able to move in with my mother, no problem.

But I definitely had to choose between either writing a novel or starting a wild animal and reptile ranch with the idea of making it not only interesting (I had always loved animals and reptiles) but also, with a wife and young child, I had to make it profitable, and that was a big question mark.

I gave the decision long and hard thought and decided that I could only start an animal and reptile ranch at this time, and say for the next ten years, whereas I could start writing a novel at any time in my life.

I had no idea how long my mother and her sister would be located in such an ideal place, with such a beautiful, warm climate and situated in such a beautiful out-of-the-way place.

So, after a lot of thought, I decided to go ahead with the ranch and pass up the novel for the time-being.

Even as a young child I had a great fascination and love for animals and reptiles of all kind and I would truly love working and breeding them even if I didn't make any money, but it was imperative upon me to make a living at it.

So that was my big choice. The rest is history, as they say. Eventually, my animal and reptile farm, I called it Kongo, flourished even though I did not make any money in the first year.

But the second year the business picked up and made more money every year than the previous year as I became well-known throughout North Florida and beyond.

This was partially because I was the only pet business where you could order any animals or reptiles that you wanted and I would get it for you. In fact, that was my motto. There was a zoo in Gainesville and they would periodically come out to see what I had and they made me promise, if I ever left the business, to donate the great horned owl that I had. That owl was so huge, I had to get a special permit in order to exhibit it.

I also had about 40 large glass-fronted sliding door snake cages which I paid a lot to have them made and the zoo people had an eye on them too.

So, my ranch was really a small zoo itself where many people would come from far away to have a picnic and be able to see a great variety of animals and reptiles at no charge.

The wolves and bobcats were a special attraction. I experimented a lot with cross-breading wolves and malamutes, a.k.a. sled dogs. I'd obtained only the best and largest specimens of malamutes from a breeder up north who specialized in malamutes and I had the largest malamutes to cross-breed with my wolves.

I also tried breeding the wildcat with the ocelot and other wildcats which never materialized because they were too shy. I did, however, manage to breed my large male wildcat with female house cats of a similar coloration.

The offspring of this union of a 40 pound wild cat with a house cat were extremely popular because they were beautiful in coloration and weighed anywhere between 12 and 28 pounds.

I also managed to popularize ferrets as pets throughout the U.S. and that was another source of my pride and joy.

After about ten years, I had exhausted all the research possibilities and all the breeding possibilities, and though I was making more money than ever, I decided it was time to try something else.

It was a sad day when I decided to leave the business and I wouldn't sell it to anyone because I didn't know what anyone might do with such an operation. I didn't want to take the chance that it would fall into the wrong hands.

I remember the last morning, when we had only the big male bobcat left, and he never calmed down, growling just as viciously after ten years as he did on the first day.

He put on quite a show for all the visitors who would come and approach the cage. He never attacked me when I fed him, but he sure put on a show of growling.

On the last day, we were all standing about twenty feet behind the cage, when I opened the door and stepped back. He slowly approached the open door, sniffing the air, and then stood right where the door was, refusing to move. We all watched apprehensively from a short distance.

Finally, after satisfying himself that the coast was clear, he bounded out in two or three huge jumps and cleared the six foot fence with ease bounding into the neighbor's yard and quickly disappearing.

I could remember that first day when I had only been in business for a couple of months when an old man drove up to our ranch in his old pick-up truck and in the back there was a safety trap which held a huge male bobcat. We started talking and he asked me would I be interested in buying the bobcat?

I said, "Sure," and we carted the trap to the middle of the grounds where I happened to have a large vacant cage. And we just slipped the trap into the door and he walked right into the cage.

That was when I was just starting to accumulate interesting animals and reptiles.

One morning something really amazing happened. A young college student and his girlfriend drove up to the ranch and in the back seat they had a injured great horned owl.

They said they were necking in the wood and this huge bird crashed into their car. They got out and picked it up and placed it in their car, and of course, knowing of my wild animal ranch, decided to bring it over and give it to me to nurse back to health.

I found it had a broken wing which we fixed and the owl gradually recovered and became one of the more interesting staples of the ranch. He was huge, over two feet tall, and people never got tired of watching him.

So that was my decision then and I still think I made the right one. I couldn't write my novel during those ten years, but I did manage to do a lot of research and a lot of work with patients, mostly students and teachers, in the realm of hypnosis, hypnotherapy, and past-life regression.

I did have enough time for the hypnosis work, but I would never have had enough time to work on a novel. This was a very productive period for my work in hypnosis because it showed me just how powerful a tool hypnosis could be, in so many ways, and in so many different situations, with so many different people, with so many different goals in mind.

While looking back, I remember now that in addition to my patients, on whom I mainly used hypnosis, I was also interested in doing research on past-life regression. For this, I went back to the Psychology Department and inquired around until I found a psychology graduate student who was also very interested in hypnosis and its possibilities in hypnotherapy and I asked her if she wanted to do some serious research on past-life regression.

She turned out to be a great subject, able to go into the deepest trance, and we did a lot of back and forth, or mutual research in which we would take turns being the subject and the therapist. As this was research, it was even more interesting than working with patients under more or less strict guidelines. Here we could go as deep as we could, into the trance state, and try to evaluate the material we got in the deep trance state, as far as past-life regression is concerned and anything else that we wanted to research. So that was another important phase of my life that happened simultaneously with the ranch...

My six favorite movies in no special order:

1.  La Dolce Vita is a great Italian film directed by Federico Fellini that is superbly crafted and captures the nihilism of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
2. Reds is directed by Warren Beatty and does a great job of capturing the events in the U.S. and the events in Russia leading up to and including the 1917 Russian revolution and the start of Communism.
3. Taxi Driver is great picture of the ‘70s directed by Martin Scorsese and captures again the nihilism and the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness of one man isolated within himself in a bustling city of ten million people.
4. Breathless was the first and the greatest of all the French imports directed by Jean-Luc Godard and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. The film captures completely the essence of an American girl falling in love with a French gangster and all the accompanying details. It is a great film which is shown over and over to this very day to illustrate some of the great techniques of filmmaking.
5. Ragtime is a film directed by the great Czechoslovakian director, Miloš Forman. This film completely captures the time period around 1910-1920 and is remarkably true to life and is completely authentic. Forman was also responsible for directing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
6. Don’t Come Knocking is a great film by Wim Wenders, a Germany director, who and made great films both American and German. This film explores time and the past and how it influences the present and the future. And it has great acting, starring Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange.

My favorite sports personalities:

• Ted Williams was quite possibly the greatest hitter ever and had an extremely obnoxious attitude towards reporters, fans, and just about everybody.

• Jim Brown was probably the greatest running back in the history of football.

• Trevor Hoffman has the most saves in baseball (575) and counting.

• Michael Jordan is generally thought to be the greatest basketball player ever.

• A.J. Foyt set a dramatic record in racing, especially at the Indianapolis racing center.

I always say that great literature and great poetry should explore the great and unanswerable questions in life. And that is what I tried to do with my poetry. I am not in any way saying I am a great poet because that is for critics and others to decide. But what I am saying is that my poetry does tackle and is greatly involved in those questions which have no readily available answers and which have occupied philosophers for centuries. That is the subject matter of my poetry and those are the question that I explore in my poetry or my novels.

For more about my books follow this link: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/wp

I don’t pattern my work after any author, but I like the work of several: J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, John Irving's The World According to Garp, Herman Hesse, James Joyce's Portrait of a Young Man, Bowles, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, William Faulkner, Albert Camus' The Stranger.

One time, by mistake, I submited my poetry to an academic publication that only published and anaylised James Joyce's work. Incidentally, they thought it's OK to publish mine in it too.

During my freshman year at Johns Hopkins I started to write by own short stories and poetry.  There wasn’t any specific incident, I was just drawn to it.  I enjoyed my literature course.  When I was a sophomore I tried to get into a graduate writing course.  I submitted one of my short stories to the professor, and I got in.  I was 19 years old in a class of 30 and 40 year old writers.  That’s when I really started writing seriously and in earnest.

1. What do I do?

I consider myself a writer. I have a published book of poetry called, "Past the Galaxies of Stars," and I have just finished a novel.

2. How do I do it?

In my dreams or in waking life I constantly think of the subject matter or the theme that I want to write about. Then I just sit down at the table with a blank sheet of paper and a tape recorder and the words just start coming and I really don't know where, specifically, they are coming from.

3. Why do I do it?

It gives me great pleasure to write either poetry or fiction. The process of creation has fascinated me since I was a freshman in college. It is a truly great feeling to sit down at the table and start  writing, and usually not having the slightest idea what the next sentence, or even the next word, will be.

4. Who would I like to talk to?

I would enjoy talking to other people who are engaged in writing poetry or fiction. They might not be actively writing at this time and that would be perfectly fine. Or they might be literary critics and are engaged in criticism rather than actual writing. That would be fine also.

5. My philosophy?

My philosophy is that truly great writing always involves analyzing and exploring the great unanswerable questions in life.

1. Raised wild animals and reptiles as pets for ten years in Melrose, Florida, 20 miles from Gainesville and the University.