When I call these short essays, “Notes from the Edge,” I mean that they are messages back from the leading edge of consciousness, back to those who are more comfortable perhaps running with the pack.
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In German, my surname Marks (or Marx, as in Karl) originally referred to those folks who lived at the edge, at the boundary markers of their town or city, of their culture really.

And even before we humans had begun to settle in our towns and cities – when we were still wild and wandering tribes of folks, always on the move – those of us who would later come to be called Marks were probably the scouts, those of us who liked to stay ahead of the rest of the tribe, always looking outwards and always letting the rest of the folks know what was coming next. Those scouts, or edge walkers, were probably just us folks who were most comfortable with newness and change.
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Ken Kesey once told a story about Tim Leary, who was definitely an edge walker, certainly one of the most far out we’ll ever see. Kesey told the story this way:

We’re all on a fast moving train. Some of us know that there’s a sharp bend in the tracks up ahead. We also know that the train is going too fast to stay on the tracks when it goes around the bend. But none of us know how to slow down or stop the train. All we can do is to wander through the cars, preparing folks for what is coming. Tim, however, has gone on ahead of us. He’s already at the bend in the tracks, trying to straighten them out before the train and the rest of us get there.
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There is collective movement to the human race. It is not on the physical plane. It is spiritual in nature. And there’s a leading edge to this spiritual movement, made up of those of us who are most comfortable with change and most eager for whatever chance for growth that Spirit might be offering next. We’re not leaders. We’re more like old Tim Leary, just ordinary folks with maybe a taste for the strange and a desire to help the human race along.

When I was growing up, folks like myself were called avant-garde, but that always seemed too foreign and fancy for my taste. And besides, I haven’t even begun to exhaust my native tongue. I’d rather just say that we’re the citizens of Edge City, living always at the edge of the edge.