A book is a book. I mean it’s only a book. But for people who like books it can be a life changing experience. I’m preparing to publish a book and hopefully it will change people’s lives. It changed mine.
After six years of writing, two years of looking for a publisher, innumerable edits and revisions - it’s ready. Here’s the cover picture. It’s a detail from the White Shaman painting from west Texas.
But it’s not about the White Shaman, he’s just helping me make a point, it’s about being human. Something that us humans don’t seem to be very good at, generally speaking.
I’m not sure it’s something we even think about. Our highly developed brain is programmed to be a citizen and a consumer and a responsible wage earner but never to be a human. When do we ever take a class in being human at school. When do we even have a conversation about it? What do we really know?
Anyways, ‘The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets’ is the title of the book and also of the chapter about the White Shaman, this intriguing 2,000 year old painting from the Pecos River canyonlands that you see above.
The painting belongs to a group of people who lived there for thousands of years and recorded their cultural knowledge in this painting. It was their book of magic secrets. It’s a snapshot of a time long ago when humans lived a hunter/gatherer lifestyle and were quite different from us but very human. I think it’s helpful to look at this subject from different perspectives.
I don’t have the answer for ‘what is human’, I’m just trying to ask the question and present different perspectives. For example, this whole project grew out of a rather naive quest to explore ‘human-ness’ and an urgent need to express something. I remember how it started and I knew it was a long shot, a one in a million chance that I would be able to complete it and publish it.
But it was a long shot for those ancient people, as well, to hunt and kill a mastodon with stone tipped spears on the Russian steppes. They took on the adventure and once in a while they got one. In Siberia, where the hunter/gatherers of North America originated, they made houses out of their bones.
This is one of the primary qualities of being human. We need adventure. These days with the mastodons gone along with most of the wildness and the wilderness, we invent sports to have our challenging adventures. Right now the NBA playoffs are on. It’s a mythic quest to conquer your enemies and emerge triumphant. The San Antonio Spurs did it 5 times and the city went wild each time.
So there’s that.
There’s so much involved in writing, publishing and marketing a book that I feel overwhelmed and underprepared much of the time. That has been my journey. Getting from one rock to another in this river, finding sustenance and succor on my journey through the deep forest.
Cheer me on! And when it comes out, take a look. If one person reads it, it’ll be fine. If a hundred people read it, it’ll be finer. I’ll have done my little bleeping part in making humanity better. If it becomes a viral phenomenon best selling world wide mega-hit, super cool.
Right now people are blowing up each other’s weapons over in Ukraine, wasting billions of dollars. I mean a Patriot missile costs 3 or 4 million dollars, and the hypersonic missiles they’re intercepting, the Kinzhal, about 10 million. Boom. And what’s the result? Death and destruction. Lots of booms and alot of wasted money. Nice job humans. I really don’t think that’s the purpose of being human. If it is then let’s just light up the nukes and call it quits.
But somewhere deep inside us resides a powerful, irreducible quest. The quest for peace. Somewhere from our ancient past rises up the desire to say something and do something that makes life better. Can we talk about this? I hope so. I hope this book inspires that.
Here’s an excerpt from the preface.
Our ancestors, if you go back far enough, were hunters and gatherers, camping out and roaming about in small bands, looking for food, coming together around the campfire at night, seeking comfort and telling stories. We did that for a long time.
Although there was considerable nuance, experimentation and creativity going on, hunting and gathering in the natural environment was our universal and original occupation. It was the lifestyle that dominated our prehistory and lasted for millions of years.
The first members of our hunting and gathering club appeared, as far as we know, 2 1/2 million years ago in Africa. They were still sleeping in the trees, judging by their long ape like arms, but also making tools and walking around on the ground, standing upright. We call those folks Homo habilis which means 'handy man' because of the stone tools found nearby, basically chipped stones.
Eventually our species, Homo sapiens, appeared 300,000 years ago. We had acquired quite a number of adaptations and refinements by that time with our opposable thumbs and the big frontal lobe on top of our brain. We learned how to domesticate fire, how to make spears and baskets and shoes and eventually we invented language.
This ability to create symbolic representations of things, to encode a mental image into vocalizations (language) and then transfer it to another person was not only the beginning of our stories and our sophisticated social structures but also of our strategic planning. That strategic planning enabled us to journey forth from Africa and conquer new lands and have amazing adventures. What’s over the next hill and what are the possibilities? Now we can explore those questions.
Look for a blockbuster summer release. Media interviews, TV appearances, book signings, Oprah, Colbert, Letterman. Oh wait he doesn’t exist anymore.
Not to overplay it, haha. I’ll be fortunate to get a website up and do a book release party at the Twig. But it’ll be glorious and fun whatever it is. It’ll be a helluva adventure, for me anyways.
music from a great album by Emancipator
a book