The Words

Something happens when I sit with an intention to write. The air changes, a breeze of something blows in, and it begins. I honor the moment with a ritual, a centering of mind with purpose, a statement of readiness to accept what I know will surely come if I can only remain quiet. Time passes hypnotically and my fingers fall to the keys.  Then the air changes again, and I look to the screen before me.  Words have appeared, and I become the first one of us to read them.

​In this, my first journal entry, it’s important to disclose this secret of mine. I will own the effort and the discipline, maybe even the writing voice – the filter of influences through which words come.  I will never own the source because it is a mystery to me, a gift from a place a million miles removed yet just out of reach, a shift key away. It’s good to acknowledge this truth of art. It could be paint on canvas, chisel to stone or wood, musical notes, movement of the body, or a hundred other forms.  Creation is over. This is a world of manifestation.

So it’s about the words. Everything that follows is about the words.  It’s about the miracle that happens when the words lift from the page and pass through the eye – how they land in the most intimate and personal place there is.

Here in the early 21st century on the good planet earth, there are some things that need to happen for this miracle to occur.  It’s what it has all come to. For those of us who receive words (ironically mostly introverted folks), it is incumbent on us to engage in such public things as social media, websites, podcasts, bookstore readings, and the like.  It strikes me as counter-intuitive, yet necessary. I see this as an opportunity to meet lovely people and engage in new relationships and experiences. I also see it as an opportunity for things to go awry, for the messenger to be prioritized over his message.
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The words which came in the form of Into the Thin, A Pilgrimage Walk Across Northern Spain will arrive at last to the world’s eyes through the strange process of publication in the late summer of 2020.  My prayer is that it will remain…all about the words.

Blessings,
Steve