?It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.?

– Confucius

Better to walk a mile along an empty beach on a moonless night, with the banshee wind howling in your ears, taking away your breath.

Better to hold a laughing infant, with all the love and care in your soul, high above your head.

Better to learn the foxtrot, learn the Charleston.

Better to eat a peach in a rowboat drifting out on the surface of a bottomless lake.

Better to drink rum drinks from a hollowed out pineapple shell, and sing sentimental ballads by the light of tiki torches.

Better to run off with the circus, and become an apprentice to the human cannonball.

Better to fall madly in love with a Chinese trapeze artist, who may or may not be some sort of a double agent.

Better to get naked with your very best lover, and eat a bowl of blood-red grapes on a Persian carpet in front of a wood fire.

Better to summon occult forces by drawing necromantic equations in chalk on the rec room floor.

Better to write an epic poem in the belly of a whale.

Better to sit on a gravestone and whistle a song.

Better to take your guitar and amplifier on top of the roof on a stormy night, and play ?All Along the Watchtower.?

Better to fall down, get up, fall down, get up, fall down, get up . . .

Better to fall in love with a vampire’s daughter.

Better to dedicate whatever time is remaining to you to the study and betterment of sperm whales or glowworms.

Better to plan a trip to the Arctic Circle.

Better to take up unicycling.

Better to read One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

Better to spend your life tracking down someone who can teach you the trick of walking barefoot across molten lava.

Better to eat chow mein in your long underwear on top of a mountain, while wolves are howling.

Better to build a rice-paper mansion on the edge of the ocean at the start of monsoon season.

Better to weave a mask of tree bark and green feathers.

Better to fall to your death from the topmost branches of a poplar tree at 95 years of age.

Better to woo your lover by depicting a story of your future life together with Balinese shadow puppets.

Better to cleverly disguise yourself as a flamenco dancer.

Better to say ?Fuck going gently into that good night.?