I was one of those geeky kids who used to go with friends to visit the Hayden Planetarium every Saturday and Sunday, back in 1949 through 1956, when I left New York City to live with my Mom in Hollywood, California, where she worked as story editor for Alfred Hitchcock.

I started my humble meteorite collection with a book by Neininger. It had a little Canyon Diablo meteorite, about 4 grams, glued onto the inside back cover, visible through a little hole that had been punched through from front cover to the last page. I still have that quarter-sized book in my collection, plus several dozen beauties that I bought from his daughter several years later.

Most folks don't know about meteorites at all and, until recently, nobody but a few "nut cases" were aware that meteorites are visitors from space. Neininger spent many futile years trying to get this idea across, but until Schumacher-Levy blasted into the surface of Jupiter a few years back, this idea was ridiculed by many so-called scientists.

Most scientists are highly committed to maintaining the status quo of beliefs, because they are terrified of change, and of new ideas. This has more to do with publish-or-perish and study guides than a genuine wish to explore new domains, but that's the way the university system has always worked. As a result, we are only now beginning to appreciate what is beyond the atmosphere of Earth.

As a matter of fact, many people today are convinced that we are not in space, never have been in space, and that all space stuff we see on the NASA station is produced in the Burbank Studios of NBC Television. There are millions of people who either don't know about satellites or who are totally convinced that they don't exist at all, and that it's some sort of weird conspiracy by the U.S. government to get more tax money out of us.

The fact is, we are in space -- and what's more, we always have been in space. Earth is one tiny rock surrounded by space, and this little rock is hurtling around the sun, contrary to many peoples' concept that the sun rises in the East and sets into the ocean at night -- a belief that will probably never die as long as people populate the surface of this planet.

The earth is hurtling in orbit around the sun, along with several other planets and many moons, plus millions of other objects in our solar system. Many asteroids (surely you've heard of them on CNN when they occasionally have near-collisions with the Earth) travel across Earth's orbit, and so do smaller celestial bodies, some of which are meteors (they become meteorites when they enter Earth's atmosphere and impact on the surface), some of which are comets (icy little buggers which contain alkanes, water and possibly other formative agents of life) and still others are unknown objects from unknown regions.

Sometimes an impact on another planet, moon or asteroidal body causes some chunks to break off and head into the orbit of Earth. Generally, the impact with Earth results from Earth running into them, rather than them running into us, or both, usually at speeds far greater than I can calculate, having lost most of my math skills the moment I left the physics department and graduate school and became an artist and writer...

There are four major food groups of meteorites found on Earth. Like I said, I forgot all my math and science when I left the university system, so if you want to know the exact chemical differences between L6 and CV5, you'll have to visit another site that gives all that stuff. As for me, I collect meteorites by magic ... I'll explain:

My interest in meteorites is shamanic. To me, a meteorite is as magical as an eagle feather, a precious or semiprecious gemstone, or an ancient artifact. You can read more about the shamanic uses of artifacts of this type in my book, Visions in the Stone.

As for my humble and moderate meteorite collection, it consists of items of great beauty... I used to collect Mars rocks, and still make jewelry from Nakhla, Zagami and the occasional NWA chunk, but my main interest is the form of the thing, not the cut, sliced or chopped meteorite, although I do appreciate pallasite and the interiors of meteorites showing those terrific patterns of Widmanstatten crystallization that can only form in near-zero gravity (no such thing as total zero gravity space within the solar system).

And, of course, I appreciate and understand the keen interest in chondrites, achondrites and rocky-irons ... But I don't collect them, at least not seriously. I have a few Esquel pieces, some Allende, and other assorted chemical oddities, but the mainstay of my collection are those gnarly thumb-printed, oriented chunks of space stuff with 100% fusion crust, which I don't paint with corrosion-proofing to prevent further oxidation, partly because of my background in temporary art, and partly because of the nature of the chemicals involved, and I want to live awhile longer, at least long enough to see the Big Impact when it happens a few years from now, like I did when I was a velocoraptor.

These days, I spend most of my time painting, sculpting, writing, choreographing, acting, producing/directing plays and designing and playing online videogames. I make my living painting backdrops for such jazz greats as Wynton Marsalis, Nancy Wilson, Herbie Hancock and others, and recently completed a project for the Hollywood Bowl and Jazz at Lincoln Center, leaving me little time for my meteorite projects ... yet, I always make some time each day, generally early in the A.M., to make meteorite jewelry, a favorite pastime of mine, and on weekends I take my little art objects to craft fairs, where they compete, sometimes successfully, with "handmade" items from China, Bali and Thailand.

Like my friend Dead Elvis, I have a sense of humor about my meteorite hobby -- some would call it an obsession... I take life very seriously, as seriously as you can take life, knowing full well that eventually the sun will go nova, the dust will be collected and recollected and recycled while our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy collide and recombine around a double super-black-hole, and all this will continue to be expanded by Dark Energy until entropy brings the whole thing to a dark, grinding halt.

Sounds grim? Not really. Life is a brief interval in an ever-expanding universe. Humans are just one of many species, and intelligence is not defined by daytime television, shopping and sports events. Would the universe be as beautiful without life? Probably, but life is unstoppable and in its highest form, slime-mold, is just about everywhere that it can possibly exist.

Looking for aliens? In meteorites, you have found them ... visitors from other worlds, and even the remains of exploded stars, planets, galaxies and who knows ... maybe even material results of the ultimate mystery of our universe, Dark Matter....???

Possibly you, too, can see all this and more, by holding in your hand, wearing on a chain, or beholding in a bell jar, the beauty and mystery of our provable Alien Visitors -- Meteorites from Space.