Ten years ago I made a solemn pledge to write a book, publish it and introduce it to the world. The pledge really was to myself, something I had to do to regain my own sanity or more accurately my own inner peace. I don’t think I was insane. That was the one clear thing in my mind. Otherwise I was pretty much wounded and in need of healing. Writing my book was the healing.
It took me six years to get it down, to get all the words in place like I envisioned but it finally happened. I looked at it one day and tt was complete. It seemed to work pretty much as I intended. Good job. Goal #1.
I spent the next two years editing it and looking for a publisher. I had more luck writing the book than I did finding a publisher. The writing was under my control, the publishers were not. They were looking out for their own agenda - how to sell books, ones that had a clearly definable audience and fit into a clearly definable genre. I had neither of those. They weren’t interested.
Sometimes you have to modify your original vow to accommodate the reality of things. Ok, fine I conceded, I’ll publish it without a publisher and set about learning Amazon’s software for self-publishing. ISBN numbers and formatting and cover art and all kinds of hoops to jump thru there were.
Plus, if you want it to be available in actual bookstores, you have to learn Ingram Spark’s software as well. Even harder: obscure instructions, dead ends, looping programs, illogical pathways, dense foliage in there.
If you want to do something bad enough you can always find a way, that’s what I learned. My book is now available in all kinds of formats: hardcover, paperback, e-book, it’s in the San Antonio public library, it’s available in actual bookstores.
The final phase of my solemn pledge was to find an audience. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last two years: telling people about it at the cafe (if I see someone reading a book I’ll go right up to them and ask them what they’re reading and generally end up in a conversation about books), going to book fairs, doing book readings and book signings and author talks. Recently I did an event at Landa library, a lovely old estate turned library surrounded by oak trees and a playground for kids.
That was fun. Eight people came. That was my audience.
thank you all for coming so much i really appreciate it / excited to have a chance to talk about my book to some other people and thank you to robin alacort who just closed the door and the beautiful landa library it’s a wonderful place to have an event
And with that I was off and running. It reminded me (and I mentioned this in my spiel ) that my father was (or had been) a preacher. He got up there and delivered his sermon to the congregation every Sunday morning. It was his solemn duty. He didn’t have much of an audience either but he persevered.
so i thought that i should probably start off with telling you something about myself / if you don’t have a connection with the author of the book then it’s kinda hard to get into it / if you feel like you know the person it’s easier to . . . so my name is rohn bayes / i’m from michigan
On and on it went over the course of an hour and a half, reading, talking, listening, having conversations.
Eight of us, nine including me. Two of them were new faces, had not met them before. One of them had read the book already, got it from the library, the other person was indígena from California but she came here when she got the call. We were talking about what attracted us to San Antonio. It was a commonality and it’s also part of the book. Anyways,
John got up and read a random passage. Just opened it up and read the Hindu creation myth from the Rig Veda. Rig Veda means "praise" and "knowledge". It goes like this:
At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness
All this was just un-illuminated water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of heat.
In the beginning desire descended on it —
that was the primal seed, born of the mind.
The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
know that which is, is kin to that which is not.
We were exploring the magic secrets of the ancient book and talking about them. How humans need a story to explain everything. We are the great story tellers. It’s one of the most human things about us - our need to tell stories. Our need to conceive of a god to assure us that everything is under control and of an afterlife to explain death. How amazing it is to be human and live on a planet with a beautiful life giving biosphere. Symbiosis, commonality, hostesses, Gilgamesh . . . and we were right back in the book again talking about the humans.
so that’s what the book’s about I sort of said in summation. one of the things it’s about / being human / pull yourself together and find your humanity / it’s right there inside of you / where else would you want to look for it ??
Mission complete? Or mission ongoing? Finding our humanity is definitely a process that I don’t think ever ends. I think we have just begun.
This journey of becoming fully human could take us to amazing places if we really believed in it. We could make a heaven on earth if we really wanted to. That’s our potential. It would be an amazing adventure. A lot of fun. More exciting than going to Mars.
Maybe we need to make a solemn vow to become fully human, to explore our deepest selves and figure out what it’s all about. Maybe that’s our project. Maybe that would lift us out of our funk, our habituated use of war to solve problems, our obsession with controlling things as if we were in control of nature. No, we’re part of nature.
I dunno maybe I’m just an inveterate preacher trying to save the world. Preaching it out like my dad.
Maybe we can save the world if we all pull together, if we become fully human, empower ourselves with the full recognition of all the amazing features that make us human.
Anyways, that’s the whole point of the book basically. Here’s my copy. It’s been through a lot: a flash flood on Broadway, many miles of riding around in my panniers, stroked and poked and flipped through, read and re-read, marked up and book marked, scanned and edited. Pretty durable.
I’m glad I made the journey.
podcast music Nils Frahm - Familiar
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