I think we all have a book in us. One that includes deep themes and our ancestral family mind. Includes thoughts we can access via time to intermingle with our clans’ religious traditions, institutions, and ancient tribal-feeling vibes.
I feel Sicily, and Rome, and Celtic mysteries in mossy green bogs and grey-veiled sun. I feel South Dakota’s dry dirt, and Saudi Arabia’s sunny sand with powerful men hearing stories that save young women. I feel the woods and water and all moments of magic in tree groves and rocky shores. I experience the garden of Eden as if it is mine…
I feel islands and boat crossings with figureheads and flowers…
Sicilian Islands Shipwrecked Figureheads © Kevin Schafer
These books include our moments of realization, when we discovered our personal self in a thud of insight, landing in our bodies, ready or not to face the world with verve and individual style.
I feel days in a brightly lit hospital room and closed windows. Sleeping then staring at window blinds patterns on the floor. Oxygen tents, later rejoining society, because it gets me closer to the freedom that comes from being outside.
These books include stories of phenomena, stories of pain and challenge, when we made the best decisions we could, and came through still here to read a post. It’s a miracle, really.
I feel what it’s like to be big enough to pick up the entire earth by a handle. I feel a regular day that includes a magical porous self taking up space, working her angle to keep the universe being more lovely for people and animals, and trees…
Starry woman is me.
Our books include future phenomena and Ideals we’d like to see realized in matter. Goals and Outcomes, and Places that we’d love to see faring better than they do. Visions and poems too. These books include healing for the harmed, challenges for those who fire insight, and the wisdom of the ages.
Maybe our books include engineered mechanics of how we could live our lives, or do live our lives, if we’ve made them with repeatable style.
I feel all the fears of writing this here. Because poetry to prose doesn’t make sense in ordinary ways, and belies my real sides. Will I be judged? Yes. And so what, I say. I explain, ‘non-ordinary states of being’ (kindly stated). I write anyway, and put it out there on the public web, because I love you. It’s the only reason to share.
Maybe our stories include explanations and retorts. Or perhaps should do’s and encouragements. Maybe they are like Ozymandias1 in the desert.
I feel like if I can tell my stories honestly, I can help others know they are not alone. I try so hard to protect others in my mind. I know I’m not the only one. Atlas Shrugged after all, and Mother Sky encompasses with a star blanket. We long to live in a safe and common sense universe, with our minds seeking to understand every moment. We can get tired, then try another way.
Maybe our books include a serenade, to those we love in this life. A song to know us by.
Or maybe our books are siren songs, from the shores of the other side. Where we know we will all land one day, singing to others across the oceans of heave and weft.
If you crash here, you will be safe though. As safe as I am. Typing at a table, feeling irons inside. So glad the fire of crying is still alive.
Preparing my book, again and again, in essay after essay. Every day is different. It’s okay.
I feel it is all okay. Lit is all okay. Literature is all. Literature is. Literature.
