I first heard about fireballs falling out of the sky when I was a student at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico back in the 60s. When fireballs rained down upon a house in a village, neighbors would surround it. They'd form a circle around the house holding lanterns until the fireballs, and often stones, stopped falling from the night sky.

At our writing workshop last week in Las Vegas, Joseph Baca contributed his own version of fireballs. With his kind permission, I repeat what he wrote:

"Darkness down this narrow alley, then, quite suddenly, three big round fireballs appeared to my left. They were about the same size as medicine balls and they hovered an inch off the ground among the weeds that did not catch fire. I froze, watching them. The red and yellow light pulsating only five feet away from where I stood.

"I was not dreaming. I was fully awake. I was afraid -- and yet I hesitated. I wanted to know what they were. Should I try to touch them? I wanted to communicate with them but the voices of the past said they were witches. This was what I was led to believe anyway. I ran home with a cold chill in my spine.

"Next day I told my mother what I had seen and she in turn told my father who said -- 'It's El Diablo . . . Joseph hasn't gone to church lately.' But I thought, neither has he. How come the fireballs didn't appear to him?

Today, as a grown man, I find myself going back to that strange night so long ago and wondering if I will ever see again the fireballs that old ones said were witches. Sometimes, late at night, I wonder about that."

Joseph, I too am wondering. Just the other night in Sapello Canyon we saw a fireball descend from the sky and hover in front of us. More on that later . . .

I think time seems to be moving fast but it's really going slow.

In the mid-nineties a computer-meister friend of ours said, "No one's ever going to make any money selling stuff on the internet." I told him I was posting all of my books on my website.

He said, "Good advertizing but it still won't sell the books." Seems like minutes ago when he said those unwise words. Books and books, editions and editions later the books are still moving along in their own stream of time, mostly propelled by the internet.

I remember saying to my friend, "I suppose you're going to tell me that Amazon.com isn't selling any books." His answer -- "Not that many cause they're still not making a profit." I didn't like to hear such discouragement because I was just setting up my first website. I was hopeful that it might help me make a little living.

It did - pre-google, pre-Amazon-making-a-profit. Publishers still had huge publicity departments then and editors took you out to lunch and if you did any promotion for your book there was a limo to pick you up. Those were the days . . . seems like seconds ago to me.

Is that what the brown lizard thinks on my doorstep? Moments ago, I was a great big, scary dinosaur. Now look at me!

Yeah, they do. Sometimes I'm not sure though -- it could be somebody else.

I once had a conversation with Geronimo in Dunkin Donuts. Not the real Geronimo but one who looked like him. Iron Eyes Cody, or somebody who looked just like him, showed up at a reading I gave at Boca Raton. He said to me, "I'm here to draw them in; you sell the books." What a sweetheart. When I went to thank him after the event, he was gone.

Couple years ago on the streets of Manhattan, well not too far from Bleeker and the offices of my agent, I spotted a funny looking little guy with a cellphone and he was saying in a loud New Yawk voice -- "Yeah, I sawr it, but whatdaya want me to do about it?" I said to my wife Lorry, "That guy looks just like Danny DeVito." She said, "That's because he IS Danny DeVito."

Jackie Chan winked at me once in the Atlanta Airport but that was because I picked him out of a sea of faces, a wave of people coming at me. I wanted to throw him a kick but I'm very glad I didn't.

Yesterday we were in Washington DC and we were having dinner at a lovely Ethiopian restaurant just up from Eads St. when in the door stepped a mild little man with beautiful dark gold skin and a haunted sort of worried hawk-like proud, dignified face and Lorry said to me, "How is it possible?"

I said, "What?" She said, "Look at him. . . isn't it . . ."

I finished it for her -- "Haile Selassie, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah."

With no imagination, you would see the spirit of the beautiful little king in all his glory -- old workclothes. There it was, the crowning moment of the imagination -- truth -- the king who faced Mussolini and had him disgraced. The king, who with dignity and solemnity and bravery faced a modern day army with bows and arrows, slings and rocks. Did he not know it was the 20th Century?

Anyone who doubts Selassie I's courage, get yourself to the corner of Eads and 23rd St and walk a little ways, order dinner, sit down and eat the best food you've ever eaten. The king will come walking in. But he won't see you. You will see him.

I was telling stories at the Miami Public Library's "The Art of Storytelling" annual festival.

Someone said, "I like those tall tales."

Tall is just another word for s-t-r-e-t-c-h. You pull the tale along like taffy, you exaggerate, you draw it out until it's laughable. Well, that's one way we do it. My way, anyway.

Our grandson Taj was present for each of the storytellings I did and so was his sister Anais. Our daughters, Mariah and Hannah were also there. My wife, Lorry was also present. I guess I am a family man storyteller: I bring my family along when I tell.

Taj did a stretch of his own when he wrote Mariah's Mom's Day card -- "You are the bestest mom in the world. I will behave for over 100 years."

That's sort of what Chipmunk said to Gila Monster when he was trying to get back in good favor with the wizard-lizard. I think I told that story for the thousandth time on Saturday. Or was it the millionth? Anyway, it was the bestest I ever did.

I bought a copy of The Lake Matters: Notes about Writing and Life by Aram Saroyan. Lorry had just made dinner and we were preparing to eat and there I was standing, reading Aram's book and loving it and I forgot about time. I was standing, reading. Time stopped. Dinner stopped. But life did not stop. Life was going on in that book, especially in that chapter I was reading where the author says -- "The writer reads, so to speak, as the carpenter looks at a newly built house -- with, perhaps, the idea of building another one like it, or maybe incorporating a nicety into an edifice currently under construction." Yes, I thought, yes. This is what's it's like to read as a writer where every comma is a dovetail joint and where every period is a ten penny nail.

What a magnificent book this is for teachers. And for writers. Both of which Aram Saroyan is.

And do not forget, he also wrote a poem that completely changed the way I (and most of my generation) listened to crickets:

Not a
cricket
ticks a
clock

As I read, and the dinner cooled on the table, a blue glow came around Aram's book. And the room, and those in it, were lighter and brighter and wiser. I looked around. The book of the blue glow was still glowing. And that's how writers read books. Something may happen that has never happened before. Aram Saroyan, 1965