Welcome Page

Notes on a Magical Journey has been online since 1998. I've been known as Yopo since before then. While the name holds no particular personal significance, other than providing me with a pleasant sense of familiarity that stems from long usage, you are certainly free to speculate about Amazonian ethno pharmacology, or to make any other obscure associations you might happen to find entertaining. Just bear in mind that such associations belong to you, not to me. When I first got online I was put on the spot for a nickname, and Yopo was the first thing that popped into my head. I've kept Yopo ever since, because that's how friends at some of my favorite online haunts have come to know me. Had I realized I was going to be stuck with it for so long a time, I might have settled on something more heroic. I could have been a Ragnar or a Lothar or some such. Instead, I have a nickname well-suited to a concrete garden gnome.

If you've visited my website before you may recall that I once made a display over being apologetic about its disorganized state. Since then I have given up on apologies, which I must confess were never all that sincere to begin with. I am a packrat by disposition, both in terms of my personal and virtual environments. A preoccupation with getting organized is not at the center of a packrat's nature. Besides, sorting through somebody else's clutter seems to be one of the more compelling activities on the internet. Who am I to deprive anyone of that pleasure?

Notes on a Magical Journey was what I called this website to begin with, and so it remains. My original comments about that still seem about right, so I'll let them stand as they have been from the start:

A short word of explanation concerning the Notes on a Magical Journey portion of the website might be in order.

The operative words are, of course, magic and journey. Together, they say something concerning how I believe the world to be, and what I think our lives in it are about. Most of what I'll offer for your examination will somehow relate to those two words.

My intention?

Only to tell anyone who cares to listen a few things about my own journey, just as one traveler along the way might share tales with another. I do so to help me define where I am, and where I am headed. In listening, you might see your own way a bit more clearly. I really have nothing more in the way of an intention than that.

When I look back over pages that I began putting here for public display a few years ago, I'm pleased to find that what I was actually doing was leaving a record for myself. What I wrote has served to help me define my own passage. I know better who I am now, by having attempted to put down who I was then. I do not intend to tinker with the fossil record, as that would be dishonest. Mainly, to myself.

If there's anything here you find interesting, you might want to check back again after a while. I'll be adding additional layers as the journey develops, and as time permits.

Thanks for stopping by!