Tent Revival

This month is nearly over and I've very little to offer. I have been working on the book mostly and kept thinking that something would arise and be worth mentioning. Nothing new has come. It's just the same ol' same old. Rent, bills, typeing, internet porn, TV shows on DVD.

I'm not sure if I've written of this or not, but when the book is complete I'll be making my return to the Dirty South. Just like that. On my trek up here to South Dakota I envisioned my leaving as a great launch into the unknown; heavier in wisdom and lighter in spirit, and with much fanfare and rejoicing by all. It will not go this way and I do not care. I will be happy to have just finished a book and get on with it all, whatever that may be. And I am not saddened by a lack of fanfare as it seems the book's completion will be its own reward. I don't know anyone who's written a novel; good or bad, and as I go through the process of one's creation my respect for anyone who has taken on such a task grows. I've worked in two bookstores, no one's reading. At least, no one's reading anything we're writing. Fic/Lit is on very few people's reading lists these days. I know full well that my book good or bad, will likely not see the light of day, and even then would have a snowball's chance in hell at any monetary success. It would also be distasteful, and presumptuous, to say that this is for those few who are wise and enlightened enough seek soul stirring prose and enrichment; or that this is for the ages and that some future generation will hale this author unkown in his own time. Who is it I seek to enrich, then; to whom is it I reach outward for? I'm not writing a diary to be kept under my pillow or locked away in some hidey-hole. I have an audience in mind. I guess it would do to say I speak to all and I speak to no one.

So, the book is very much like this blog. Which I would say is very much like the Happy Harry Hard On in "Pump Up The Volume". Are you out there? Are you listening? It is catharsis. It is masturbation. It is an attempt to reach out to let anyone I find know they are not alone, and it is a call to anyone who finds me to let me know that I am not alone. This is all just my message in a bottle, my voice on an open frequency. This is just me in third grade when we were made to write our names and addresses on postcards, tie them to a ballon and set them adrift. It is the Zen plane. It is solus tudin. It is the carapice in which I hide, and it my deliverance. Within, and without. But some one said it best (as someone else always has), and this month I will leave you (whoever you are) with a quote.

So, until next time, this Jody Callahan saying eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark.

Excerpt from “In the Hand of Dante”
By Nick Tosches

“And, yes, I came to believe ever more deeply, and with ever greater thanks, that God had spared me – for something. I came to believe that God kept me alive to deliver forth all that I could; that He had kept me alive to surrender myself as a vessel, that I might let flow to others, through my [work], the gift that I had received: the gift of the awareness of the immense blessing of the every moment and the every breath that we are given; the gift of the awareness that we are the destroyers of our own lives, the breakers of our own hearts; that freedom lies only in the absolute honesty that fear strangulates within us; that all the pretty pills and the fraud and whoredom of psychotherapy and mass-market spirituality in this world are as nothing compared to the ancient words of the Gospel of Thomas—‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you’—and these words are all of truth and wisdom that need be known.
…I had been kept alive for this; to make what I could, and thus be free, in fidelity and in gratitude and in dignity.”