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I began working with Paul about 8 years ago, when he invited me to use Serendip as the Web platform for a new course. While creating the course page (an outgrowth of which continues to flourish on Serendip), Paul suggested we find an image to introduce it.  We landed on an intensely lit blue doorway, door open with an exit sign overhead; Paul showed me how to add it to the page. I enjoyed the sense of possibility, daring, and moving into the unknown that the exit door suggested -- just what I wanted the course to signal.  (Paul, I hear you now:"There is always a way out.")  I also wanted the course to have as its epigraph a passage from Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem:" "There is a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

Paul didn't like Leonard Cohen very much (though I tried to talk him into it).  Too mystical and abstract.  Paul used the term "crack" a lot, though, in his work on loopy science.  "The crack" in his formulation was a source of light, change, creative disruption.  When Paul typed the lines into the page, he left out "the" so it read, "that's how light gets in."  When I timidly pointed out the error (this was years ago, mind, when I was in awe of him and not yet a lucky colleague and friend . . . still in awe, but no longer timid), Paul explained that he didn't like the "the" because it limited and bounded "light" -- made it sound spiritual rather than actual.  

Paul: a light source, a liberating agent, a generous, curious, caring cat.  Talking with him was, and I am findiing continues to be, amazing. All my life, I am seeking conversation that brings my heart and mind closer to union with the creative source of the universe.  Conversation with Paul was and is that, always that: like writing, reading, and traveling inside a great big book (website?) of meaning, chance, and change. 

During the Evolving Systems phase, Paul and I argued about and explored the question whether love is as foundational to evolving systems as form, aesthetics, and meaning.  Walking alongside him while he experienced illness this winter/spring, I have gained deep respect for the love, light, and caring his family carried/carries with and for him, and he for them.  In/as Paul, love and learning, loving learning, learning love . . . all of these ARE light.  Warming, too.