True Gemini - Herschael DeJong

I don't write book reviews.  I don't write press releases and I am not doing either one of those on this temperate Saturday, where instead of a sunny day, the clouds shine overhead.  The skies have all of the appeal of a lead balloon.  In other words, the perfect day to read a book.  I finally opened the book that my long lost brother sent to me.  I haven't seen him since he was seven-years-old and I honestly don't know that I want or need to see him again.  Forgive me, but that sounds cold and unfeeling.  It's not cold and unfeeling, but rather because I feel way too much and I have no desire for either one of us to awaken memories that are best forgiven and forgotten.  I don't want to remember our childhood, and though I have faced it to the best of my ability and dealt with the adults that were in charge at that time, the person I cannot see is the one who was victimized the most.

For those of you who have been through war, it's kind of a form of survivor's guilt.  It's hard to explain, but, the reality is, it's like reliving a living hell all over again.  After I wrote, "An Appearance of Glass", I had self published it because I had no desire to promote it and I wanted to use my pain in a positive way.   It was a release.  I shared it with my brother and  he wrote the introduction and with his permission, I included it in the work.  From a safe distance, we view each other and really only know only the faintest outline of each other's lives.   My brother has come out with his own book and had hoped that our sister would write the third part, which she has no desire to complete that work, quite possibly for the same reason I can't see my brother again.  Our pain thresholds are all different.  I don't hate him, but my wounds are very deep and it would be inappropriate to open them again.

Regarding his work, I am not going to say that this is a work of art.  I am not also going to say it's horrible.  It's a rendering, that reminds me of medicine.  The kind of medicine that is part of an individual's healing process to let others know that it's possible to go forward.  It's a survivor's account that gave a person permission to go forward with his life, but I have to be honest, it angers me.  I cannot say why.  I feel there has been no resolution and parts that lack personal ownership until much later on.  I do hope, sincerely hope, that this man does take ownership for his life at long last,  and begins to thrive in ways that he only dreamed of.

This may appear to be too personal to post.  The response is a mirror reflection of the work rendered. The work was very personal.  The response, proportional in manner since my name was cited.  My recommendation for the public to read it or not carries no weight.  People will do as they will and wonder what the hell this was all about for a micro-second of their lives and move on.

Be Anxious For Nothing

It was a few months ago that I found this place, a used bookshop in St. Paul, Minnesota.  I rushed through the stacks and saw someone's breathing dream.  There is just something about old books, the dog-eared pages, the musty smells that sometimes accompany them.  They have been lived in, dreamed about and sometimes it's just the pulp of pulp.  It's the readers that keep these works alive and you can tell a lot about a culture by what is celebrated or pushed into a hidden corner. It's a strange thing to discover a book store and then when you try to scour the web to find it again, to remember the details, the seating areas and how almost each and every detail had the touch of the proprietors hands, only to come up short and not find it.

I had been in a rush, it was the end of a day, and I snapped the picture because I wanted to remember this place, this storehouse of secret pleasures, serialized novels, the ink that had been poured out because there are many stories in this world.  In spite of the economic downturn, the bookstores still go on and the invitation to hear the lives of others continues.  I had remembered my excitement as a youth about finding these places throughout the cities.  New authors, old olds, and the ancients that had stood the test of time.

I have remembered, not forgotten going through those marvelous stacks, perhaps to find an obscure work, a celebrity's biography and advice about how to live life.  There are no shortages of others trying to tell us how things are or what to do to be like them.  I used to read them for their comical value.  Even more hilarious are the books that try to tell you how to be yourself, how to love and accept yourself in a world of forced compliance and conformity.

I lingered, I scanned the aisles, the stacks and thought how I could lose myself for days here.  The winter months are fast approaching and winter usually meant finding a good book during the hibernating months.  Little seeds of thought and wonder, when perhaps you find a work that isn't so well read, or well written and perhaps you wonder how it made it into print.  Books were times of sharing stories, inspiring thought, an intimate exchange of ideas between the writer and the reader.  I remember what it was like to be enthralled by the voice of the writer, and have know times where a work laid there, half read because there was nothing that engaged my mind.

I remember the days of actively seeking out new works, discovering old voices and hearing the dialogue bounce like music in my mind.  The conspiracy that would take place as you worried for a character, and cared, in spite of their obvious flaws, you had compassion for them.  There was something about them that you identified with and at times, there were those you had little in common with, but their story compelled you to listen.  How did they deal with the circumstances of life, of love, and even of death?  That wanting to know, perhaps gleaning some lessons, or hearing the pastoral display of their image, surroundings, the stereotypical use of language to immediately project an image in your mind of what surrounded them, who they were speaking to, and how they reacted to the latest threat or travesty that befell them.

If you notice, there isn't a story without tragedy or conflict.  There is a war and in the midst of all of this drama that plays out there is a challenge of the heart.  We sometimes bemoan the choices of the characters and have to be swayed by their decisions or not.  The reader could decide to be the impartial observer, having a moment to forget about their own troubles in life to concentrate on the fictions or real problems of others.  However, do we have a sense anymore of what it would be like to be in another person's life?

I thought of how much work revolves around our material appetites of money, sex and food.  The higher works try to take us out of the base realms into love and virtue.  Still higher yet, we see the works that act as puzzles to stimulate our intellect.  Until we reach the spiritual realms of morality, God and Church,

The range of our human experience is catalogued in books, without a right or wrong place of being.  Still, the need changes as our words and usage changes.  Languages that are used are living languages, but the human experience is ever changing as we go on.  Bookstores are those repositories of just how much we have changed as documented by the writers of their ages.  What was valued, believed, shared and reserved is a deep reflection of what mattered most.

It's not always easy to go through these changes, but the results are usually worth it.  Humanity wasn't built for comfort or easy answers, it was meant to grow in ways we may never get to witness in our time.  That's where hope comes in, a deep hope that we will value one another and our collective experience on this world.