I've recently discovered a new and convenient form of time travel. The Internet continues to surprise me. I just use one of those translation sites to turn phrases from English to Sanskrit and then back again. It is amazing how much this resembles having a conversation. Its like being back there, learning all the things you learn about a culture just trying to stay dry, clean and fed. Each of the translation sites is a bit different. I guess like talking to different individuals from way back then. I started out with simple phrases but as I began to get a handle on the process my topics became more thoughtful. It was about a week into the obsession that I learned the intriguing fact about reincarnation that is the point of all this. When the concept first appeared in India it didn't have the exact linearity it has now where first you are this person or animal, then you die and come back as some other person or animal. And so on. There was still the concept of a progression of your soul as you moved from one instantiation to another, but this progression needn't be chronological. You might first be a fruit bat back in the 1800s, then a monk in the 1300s and then a talk show host in the late 1970s. You could even be two different instantiations at the same chronological time. There were two variants of the word reincarnation. The first, reincarnation(1), was used when you knew the first thing was earlier in the soul's progression than the second. Note that it didn't imply that the second was the direct next stage of progression. The second variant, reincarnation(2), was used when you weren't sure which of the two instantiations might have been earlier in the soul's progression. In my example above, the fruit bat was reincarnated(1) as both a monk and a talk show host. Whereas each of the three was reincarnated(2) as the others. Anyway, to the point. As soon as I caught on to these two variants it became obvious to me that my dad was the reincarnation(2) of Richard Milhous Nixon. The question I am still working on is whether Nixon was reincarnated(1) as my dad, or the other way around. But more on that later. ["Nixon and My Dad" April 16, 2000] ------------------------------ YOUR DAILY STEAM ------------------------------ ISSN 1206-4130 http://2x4group.com/yds YOUR DAILY STEAM is a continuing series of fables written by James Spyker. If you like them feel free to forward them around. Send me your e-mail address to receive a free subscription. Subscription and editorial correspondence to yds@2x4group.com