Checking in

My blogs and articles are irregular, intermittent. Do I care? No. But I am checking in.

I have not been idle. I read and I write. But do I have anything to add? I counted the books I have written so far. It seems that the book I finished recently was my twenty-seventh. Each of my books subsumes all the previous ones.

The latest book is one I told myself I would never write. It’s about the I Ching. It’s not an expert’s book; I don’t know Chinese and I haven’t done a higher degree in Chinese philosophy. So what could I offer?

I was prompted to start writing because I went to a big city bookshop and found only one book on the I Ching. I was saddened because it suggested that the I Ching was dying out. Although I have never felt the need to proselytise the book or the practice of reading the I Ching, I don’t want the book to die out. It’s an important part of the world, as much as…. Well, you can supply a list of all the things that are important for humans to keep.

So I wrote the book. Then I was musing about what title to give the book, and the answer to that question is always obvious, in the end, anyway. I called it “A Singular Book of Great Esteem” because that’s what it is, and has been for three thousand years and more. I gave it the sub-title “Life with the I Ching”, because that’s honest and descriptive.

However, after I started writing, I was troubled. Early on in the process, I had an episode which doctors subsequently described as a minor stroke. My impression of this description is that a person ends up with impairments: struggling with speech, with gait, with thinking. Looking back, I can see that my thinking was indeed heavily impaired for about two weeks. I had to work through it.

Sorry, that’s a vague sentence, not good enough. This is better: I felt I had to work through the experience to the best of my ability at the time. Not pushing too hard, but being present to the work I had started, and continuing to try to make sense of it. So I sat down each day to see what needed writing next, following the thread, filling out the picture.

I soon faced up to the fact the I Ching is the perfect “other” to ask about what happened. It wouldn’t be presumptuous to ask it directly, why did this happen? What is happening now? How should I proceed?

So, I learned. There is no final statement, no final conclusion, but there is enough each day it you are open to what life gives. There are doorways that you never saw before that suddenly are open. The thing is, to walk through the door.

Currently (mid-March), copies of the book (draft) are with a group of Early Readers. I am open to listening to what reaction they have to the book, and I will consider how I will finalise it. Then there might be a book release for my 27th book.

Some might say that it’s not a proper non-fiction book. There’s too much personal story. Harsh. But let me counter with an aphorism I read recently: “Writing non-fiction is always a form of memoir” (Rick Gekoski, Guarded by Dragons, 2021). Gekoski described his book as “an attempt to avoid answering the question ‘What have you learnt?’ by substituting the more pertinent ‘What have you experienced?’” Of course, Gekoski would be appalled by my calling his sentence an aphorism. He quotes William Blake: “To generalise is to be an idiot.”

The last time I went to see the neurologist, I showed her a list of books that I still have it in mind to write. Of course, a year ago, “A Singular Book of Great Esteem” was not on the list. Nevertheless.

Enjoy.

“A Singular Book of Great Esteem” book cover