[Prestidigitweeze]

I have friends who are excellent thinkers and we have great conversations nearly every time we meet. Writers like Doug Rice and Colin Raff, novelists like Carl Watson, composers like Gordon Beeferman -- people of that caliber are everywhere if you choose to engage them.

We've written manifestos, cobbled together magazines, parallel-thought pieces of music, collaborated on writing and letterpress anthologies, and remade civilizations glimpsed in the complexities of rising smoke and bubbles.

My grillfiend and her sister are second-gen fine artists and they teach me about art criticism virtually every time we talk about a painting. We have great conversations at home, which is one of the things that attracted me to my bee-troughed: We've never made small talk in seven moo-hanking years.

Secretly, great thinkers are everywhere. The trick is always finding them -- but once you do, your life gets richer.