Commencement

A commencement is at once an ending and a beginning. In my case it is the ending of the writing, editing, fine tuning, reviewing, submitting, authorizing and self-publishing period, and the beginning of the oh my period in which my first book, Potholes in Paradise, is brought into the public sphere. In perhaps an acknowledgment of my buddhist tendency, I find myself only distantly attached to this first offspring even as I proceed to go through unfamiliar motions like schlepping it to bookstores and somewhat awkwardly planning some kind of outing. I have no idea what kind of reaction I may receive: some may like it, some may dislike it, some may find it uninteresting or irrelevant. I suspect it will find its way into the eyeballs of those for whom it is meant. It is an offering. I felt an urge to create a record, as if to say, everyone, yes you, this is a precious place. Don't take it for granted. If you love it, protect it. Be proactive. A stitch in time saves nine. And so on. As if to say, (as my mother would say to me: put this on my tombstone): "It says here, I tried." Tried? To bring an awareness, in a cheerful (or mostly cheerful) way, of the difference between conscious stewardship joined with proactive attention and an enormous imaginative poverty by which most of us allow others to create (and change, or perhaps abuse) the world which we all share. Orcas is small—the effects of change are visible; the trendlines are transparent. There is much love here—perhaps my form of this love is to serve (I write on the day before Mother's Day 2009) as a tenacious protector of this landscape and what appeared, at the beginning of my life here, to be a balanced, sustainable way of being on the earth. Potholes in Paradise reflects the richness of being engaged in a complex, undefined, ongoing unfolding. I hope you enjoy it.