DIRECT AND IMMEDIATE Ideas, like blades of prairie grass, sprout in abundance everywhere. Equal at their inception, all of them have the potential to develop beneficially. From mere scribbled notes, to books blossoming from imprisoned authors, to worldly Montaignes, ideas can encourage us, even to flourish in inhospitable places. Ideas to fit our particular lives. Elementary thought, the ordinary, the eccentric, all are conditional at first. Cultivated by outsiders, the new art, music, popular culture and knowledge thrive everywhere, but hardly ever are considered mainstream. How influential, and as pertinent, who promotes them, determines their utility and value. People have to be comfortable with them, or perceive how far-reaching these ideas are. I am a thinker, an eccentric one by all accounts. These ideas seem most natural to me, and I find myself grafting them into one book after another. Holding any book, and such a book as this is a suspenseful action. Does it click with us? Are we attracted by its appearance? Are we influenced by the endorsements of friends or pundits? Striding through this prairie of universal ideas, adventurous browsers and informed readers will pick out which ideas are substantial to them.