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I only met Alan once in person. That was about a year ago in Phoenix when he had come over to discuss treatment with Dr. Kurth of the Barrows Neurological Institute. He and his wife stopped the night before at a Mexican restaurant to eat dinner with some of his Parkinsons friends who knew of his coming. I was impressed by his intelligence and his serious but engaging way. I had already read a great deal of the very interesting and often very scientific postings he gave to us all on our Net discussion group. As we sat down next to each other to eat I introduced myself to him., "Hi, I'm RAT." In his own quiet and sometimes humorous way, he neither questioned nor challenged my remark. The Perseids (remembering Alan upon his death) crashing into the august atmosphere the perseids illuminate the evening sky and still instill wonder even after the parabolic function has been charted even after we left brain understand that they are little more than space rubble even after we have watched the stars for 10,000 recorded years and 10's of 10's of thousands of unrecorded, flint spark years before that human nature still likes the fire, human nature still likes the show, human nature still respects the extraordinaire. the beauty, the illumination, the death nothing can be taken back, nothing can be removed from the whole. each is required to complete the cycle with every birth ... a pre-ordainment of death &, with our disease an understanding that there will be days of feebleness, there will be days of rage in the dog days of August... there will be light; there will be death. we chose little; we accept much in a world of randomness run amuck we find we have been chosen chosen to learn the meanings of the Greek words for "stuck" and "slow" and speak of the "dysfunction" in our lives. we are living dead, slowly entombed and looking out upon a world that travels much faster than us a world that puts us aside so we aren't in the way time travelers stuck in time. living in the amber slowness of a disease that neither takes us here nor there ... we float between the past and future and exist time-locked in each. better to live like Alan better to make a noise, to try, to illuminate with every birth a pre-ordainment of death with every birth the chance for illumination but unlike the stars that chance comes to man only with work, only with the coaxing of intelligence, only with honesty and with the courage of your convictions. human nature still likes the fire, human nature still likes the show, human nature still respects the extraordinaire Alan, this song's for you. with every meteorite an understanding that should the capricious randomness of nature put that meteorite on a collision course with earth there will be illumination; there will be death