TOAD TALK is an allegory to serve as a sort of philosophical rehabilitation for young and old alike. This little book attempts to illustrate how we all take certain ideas for granted and mold them into realities which shape our beliefs. Each culture enjoys it's very own reality and billions of Earth's inhabitants sculpt their own as well. Old Mr. Toad lives in the reality of Nature, the very first reality, and the reality which will remain long after those billions of second realities have become extinct...after humankind has passed on to the heaven which supposedly and hopefully awaits them. Mr. Toad is an iconoclast...he delights in being contrary to the more protected, even sacred beliefs of the human world. However he is a sweet little guy who means absolutely no harm whatsoever to those who would be enlightened by his "out of the box" manner in poking little holes in cultural paradigms. Paradigms design the ways we think and refuse to give us the tools to alter those ways of thinking. To quotethe philosopher Thomas Merton, "but one thing is certain; if the contemplative, the monk, the priest and the poet merely forsake their vestiges of wisdom and join in the triumphant, empty-headed crowing of advertising men and engineers ofopinion then there is nothing left in store for us than total madness." He and Toad are buddies.