What Remains To Be Said

Lately, I will look up—from the book covers I'm buried in, or the computer screen I'm plastered to—and experience a mild panic. What have I done with my life, I'll wonder, and has the extraordinary gamble of devoting myself to literature (at the expense of all else) been worth it; has it paid off?

At fifty-one (my sixth bewildering decade on this planet), I'm asking myself these questions with renewed urgency. Yet once the anxious flutter subsides, I'm left with the same answer.

I had no choice, really. There was no other way. A life of letters—first as voracious reader, then as delirious writer—has meant so many things to me it's difficult to begin to untangle.

On one level, reading and writing are play, serious play, and a fine-tuning of suffering. Which is to say, the literary life is a pleasurable form of self-mediation, pursuit of higher consciousness, and ultimately service.

Books—by others and, eventually, myself—have been there for me in ways that people could not be. They’ve revealed me to myself over time, mentored me, sustained and inspired me—offering a way to be in this world, but not of it . . .

Strange to say, perhaps, but it was reading and writing that taught me how to meditate in a fashion—slipping through the bars of self and time—as well as how to bow, give thanks, pray. Whether or not I realized it, from the start books pointed me in the direction of the long, hard road to spiritual transformation and helped me take the first steps.

Admittedly, writing has sometimes felt like a lonely vocation. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. Literature has repeatedly rescued me from loneliness and connected me to the world. Miraculously, it has gifted me friends across space and time, raising the dead of previous generations and granting me far-flung readers.

Thank you, dear friends (visible and invisible). I hope I’ve not been too self-indulgent and that my words, at times, have spoken your silences, the way other writers have spoken mine. I define aphorisms as quotes from the soul’s dialogue with itself, and it is remarkable that what we think of as most intimate can resonate most with strangers. I hope this is the case for these new aphorisms of mine:
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Not all poets are prophets, but all prophets are poets.

Loneliness is the price we pay for not embracing aloneness.

The true artist is, with Jesus, a fisherman of souls.

One is not a mystic if they do not believe in a previous and future existence.

Love retrieves us from the underworld of the self.

Half of seeing ourselves in everyone is compassion; the other half is arrogance.

Fire releases our deepest sweetness.

Sometimes, love is biting your tongue until it bleeds.

Beware the blood of martyrs; it stains the soul for eternity . . .

After asking a question of the Divine, listen.

If not humility, then humiliation will be the key to salvation.

The poet’s notepad is a prescription pad.

If each of us houses the Divine, then to take another’s life is to murder a portion of God.

In matters of the spirit, a little is a lot.

Sometimes, greater faith requires small heresies.

Let your secrets be good deeds.

There is a time for running away and a time for returning Home.

Hope is another name for faith.

Do not be deceived by the great illusory distances of Time . . .

Save us from the smugness of certainty, the rigidness of finality.

Fanaticism is closer to doubt than faith.

Exiles are married to a dream.

In silence, we honor the unsayable.