For starters, I was brought up in an immigrant community, another culture, another language. But once I left the house, at school and on the street, I was in mid-century America, both in an urban evironment until I was about 12, and later, a small country town, rural and "traditional". You will note I put "traditional" in quotes because there was nothing traditional about it, it was a world in violent transition, although the people living there seemed to be completely oblivious of that.

I read a lot of science-fiction as a kid. I quickly became comfortable with the idea of alien cultures, on other worlds, or in the far future. The authors of those books may have not really known anything about alien societies, but at least they were trying to imagine what they might be like, and what the consequences of that might be.

I went to a small, sleepy, southern liberal arts college, a nurturing and isolated environment, then after a few years was thrown into a military at war, a ship far at sea, an environment totally different from anything I had ever experienced, a world of beauty, excitement, adventure, yet one that was totally indifferent to whether I lived or died; a universe where I ceased to exist except as an expendable member of a team. I have never been lonelier in my life than locked up in a tin can with 400 other men just like me. I had to create my own reality.

When I returned to college, I did so to a world suddenly undergoing violent upheavals. There were political, social, artistic, and cultural revolutions going on, and I was cast into the role of an outcast in a threatened community of exiles. I was reminded again what it was like to be ghettoized, to be a member of a separate community, to be an outsider, the Other.

And then my first job out of college...a year in a foreign country, living, thinking and speaking the language of my youth, but in a culture that though similar to what I was familiar with, was still different in subtle but jarring ways. I thought of myself as a secret agent, working off-planet for the Empire, it was a feeling so strong that when one day, by chance, I met another man in circumstances similar to mine we instantly became fast friends as we explored our similarities. Each knew exactly what the other was about. We were on separate missions Up the Line, and for a brief moment our paths intersected. Comrades.

Eventually I came back, I settled into the quiet routine of a blue collar trade and night school while I did my graduate work. And I sailed and sailed and sailed my boat until it became as much a part of my life as did driving a car in city traffic. I did that for five years, and then, finally grown up and fully educated, I left home forever and never went back.

From then on I lived a normal life, career, marriage, travel, a solid, buttoned-down, corporate middle-class existence, but although I always felt comfortable there I knew it was all an illusion of normalcy. I never took it too seriously. Fortunately, you don't have to to survive in that environment. I was still Up the Line, There is no real world out there. You have to carve out your own. And you dare not become too comfortable in it.

As a matter of fact, I have this distinct feeling I'm about ready for the other shoe to drop. I can handle it Up the Line. I've been there before.