HinesSight

I get an exclusive interview with myself

It’s been three months since my non-fiction book about Plotinus, a 3rd century Greek philosopher, was published. So I thought I’d catch up with myself and provide an exclusive update to my HinesSight weblog readership about what is happening with “Return to the One.” I found Brian outside, enjoying an unusually warm October Oregon day on his deck.

Me: Thanks for taking the time for this interview.

Brian: No problem. I’ve managed to fit you in between reading the Oregonian sports page and taking my Sunday afternoon nap. Always got time for someone I’m so close to and admire so much. Fire away.

Me: Well, let’s start with how book sales are going. Are they meeting your expectations?

Brian: I’ll put it this way. “Return to the One” is a wonderfully-written, extensively-researched, skillfully-edited book about a philosopher who is recognized as one of the greatest mystics and metaphysical thinkers in Western history. My book is inspiring, profound, and easier to read than any other book about Plotinus. It describes a highly persuasive, scientifically compatible, non-religious system that is as close to a universal spirituality as you’ll find anywhere.

Me: So, book sales must be…

Brian: Absolutely awful, naturally. The book is staying on the downhill side of Amazon’s million ranking, but not by much. Embarrassingly, according to Amazon my out-of-print book, “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” is selling better than “Return to the One.” And I note that Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” is #24, while my book is, well, it’s too depressing to say. That’s one difference between the Albom book and my book. Another difference is that I can pretty much guarantee that none of us really is going to meet five people in heaven, while I am quite confident that we are indeed going to encounter the One after death, because the One is what is really real.

Me: Are you surprised by how poorly your book is selling?

Brian: No. As I say in the book, most people don’t want to know the truth about what lies beyond the world that we know now. They want to remain with their own comfortable beliefs about what happens after death, what “heaven” and “God” are like, all that stuff. So religious writings that reinforce existing beliefs naturally are going to be more popular than mystical writings that say, “You’ve got to find out the truth for yourself.”

My intuitive pre-publication projection was that maybe 5% of readers are interested in mysticism, and maybe 1% in Greek philosophy. Since my book is billed on the back cover as “Greek Philosophy/Mysticism,” I multiplied 100 million potential readers by 5% and got 5 million. Then I multiplied 5 million by 1% and got 50,000 possible sales to aficionados of mysticism and Greek philosophy. But somewhere along the mathematical line I must have omitted a zero multiplicative term, because zero is much closer to actual sales than 50,000.

Me: How much publicity has the book gotten? Maybe that is the problem.

Brian: “Maybe”? For sure. The publisher and I have sent pre-and-post publication copies out to lots of reviewers. So far, nada, nothing. I do feel, however, that I’m able to track the review copies through used bookstores that have “Return to the One” for sale. For example, if I send a book to a reviewer with an address on Broadway in New York City, a few weeks later a used book will pop up for sale—guess where!—at a bookstore near Broadway in New York. I like to fantasize that the clerk from the New York Times Book Review glances at my book before she plops it down on the store’s used book buying desk and says to herself, “This looks pretty interesting.”

Me: It doesn’t sound like reviewers have been very kind to you.

Brian: They haven’t been kind, and they haven’t been unkind. The nastiest thing about book reviewers is that often you don’t even get a rejection letter. They just ignore you, which is the cruelest cut of all. I did hear back from the “New Age Retailer” folks, though. They said in an email: “This is to let you know the reviewer who read ‘Return to the One’ by Brian Hines decided not to review the book. He found the book a bit dry, not relevant to today's issues. I regret to say we will not publish a review on this title.” I loved the “not relevant to today’s issues” comment. Hey! Understanding the nature of reality is relevant to today’s issues, New Age Retailer!

Me: You seem bitter. Does it bother you that reviewers aren’t giving your book the attention you feel it deserves?

Brian: No, not exactly. It bothers me that reviewers and publishers didn’t give my book the attention it deserved. If I had been able to get “Return to the One” published by a more mainstream publisher, maybe my sales wouldn’t be languishing. But I’m not alone in having such a “are all you guys idiots?” attitude toward book publishers. A friend recently turned me on to a great web site by Ashland author Gerard Jones. It’s amazing. And often hilarious. He includes actual email correspondence between he and countless agents and publishers. This is one of the publisher pages. Scroll down and you’ll have some good laughs, especially if you’re a writer. Take a look at his agent pages and you’ll learn why it’s so important for a writer to have a good vocabulary: you need to have a wide variety of swear words at your command to be able to respond appropriately to the fools who, sadly, so often end up evaluating book proposals at publishing houses.

Well, it’s almost nap time.

Me: OK. Let’s end with a quick peek at your next book project.

Brian: Given my experience so far with “Return to the One” I’m strongly leaning toward something with more popular appeal. “The Five Pets You Will Meet in Heaven” is my working title. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Bumper sticker wisdom

Here’s some bumper sticker/wooden sign wisdom that I picked up in several artsy-crafty Sisters stores yesterday:

“My greatest fear is that there is no PMS, and this is my personality.”

“If life were logical, men would ride side-saddle.”

“Isn’t a smoking area in a restaurant like a peeing area in a swimming pool?”

“My wife keeps saying I never listen to her…or something like that.”

“If I want to hear the pitter-patter of little feet, I’ll put shoes on my dog.”

I started paying more attention to this pithy literary genre because I was looking for a way to entertain myself while Laurel pawed through seemingly endless bins of prints, searching for some artwork that we needed in our house for some reason that never quite registered on me (guess I should have bought #4 above.)

So I’d get out my always-handy notepad and pen and jot down sayings that struck me, figuring that this was more courteous and less likely to result in annoyed looks from the store owner than taking a flash photo of the bumper sticker or wooden sign whose message I wanted to remember but didn’t want to buy.

Now I have a shopping purpose in life, somewhat comparable but much less intense than Laurel’s quest for the ultimate pair of dichroic glass earrings. I shall continue accumulating the best short sayings I see until I have several hundred. Then I will publish them in a Best Bumper Stickers book, sit back, and wait for several hundred copyright infringement complaints to flow in, the cost of which to settle will suck up all of my royalties.

Better think of another book idea. Like the wonderful “Walter the Farting Dog” that Laurel bought yesterday. This is a great book and appears to be a best-seller, which isn’t surprising given the title. “Farting” is a guaranteed attention-getter, whether the word is spoken or written, and even more so when the action is enthusiastically indulged in.

A bit more about George W. Bush and bumper sticker wisdom: in the September 13 issue of “The New Yorker” there is an article on “Bush Speak—the President’s vernacular style.” The author, Philip Gourevitch, concludes what I have always thought myself. Namely, “He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of these skills indicates a lack of intelligence.”

Actually, says Gourevitch, Bush’s intelligence “is—if not especially literate—acutely verbal.” Bush clearly is a better speaker than Kerry, and I’m afraid he is going to clean the floor with Kerry in the presidential debates. One reason is that Bush knows how to put his points across as if he was reading from a series of bumper stickers. His words are simple, understandable, and strong. In contrast, Gourevitch observes, “John Kerry can speak rousingly for whole paragraphs without saying anything precise or concrete.”

Kerry would do well to spend some time as I did yesterday: reading bumper stickers and being exposed to writing that says a lot in a few words. I’m no one to talk, of course, as I love to spend a page saying what could be said in a couple of lines. But I’m not running for president. Kerry is, and we desperately need him to learn how to speak effectively. Now!

Imaginary Keith, Real Keith

Yesterday I got to sign and sell a copy of my book about Plotinus to two people who share one body. Reading Keith’s posting today on his always-entertaining blog, it seems that I sold the copy to Imaginary Keith, who then took it home to Real Keith. Or maybe it was the other way around. No matter. I’m just happy that “Return to the One” is in the hands of two more readers, who just happen to inhabit the same brain.

I also was happy to learn from the posting that whichever Keith it was who fixed our sprinkler head is only going to charge for the few minutes of actual garden maintenance he put in during the several hours he was at our house. The rest of the time Keith and I talked about our blogs and writing, which is ever so much more interesting than trying to figure out why some spots in the lawn aren’t getting watered.

Luckily, landscapers don’t bill like lawyers. If Keith was an attorney I could expect to get a bill from him any day now: “Sprinkler repair, five minutes--$3.75; pre-repair conversation with client about miscellaneous matters, ninety minutes, $67.50. Total--$71.25.”

We covered quite a bit of “miscellaneous matters” ground standing in the shade by the front door while Keith’s two man crew bustled around in the hot sun doing our annual pruning. Maybe they thought we were engaged in a deep discussion about the Hines’ landscaping needs. Yeah, right…

We had bigger fish to fry that day, like talking about how it is that authors can stay (minimally) sane when they spend years writing a book, and then (1) publisher after publisher rejects the manuscript, until finally the book is printed and (2) reviewer after reviewer sits on their hands rather than review the book, after which (3) distribution glitches lead to online retailer after online retailer screwing up the book’s listing and stocking status, until at long last the book is finally ready to be bought and then (4) prospective reader after prospective reader decides to watch Jeopardy instead of delving into some Greek philosophy.

Oh, did I say “authors” in the paragraph above? I should have said “Brian.” But things probably aren’t as bad as 1-4 sound. I’m just in the one-month-after-publication stage, the authorial version of post-partum depression. You look forward so much to getting your book born after a seemingly endless four-year gestation. Yes, it will be so great to nestle the little tyke in your arms and have people come up and say, “She’s so cute! Can I pick her up?” Sure, at Amazon for $16.99 plus shipping. Take her home with you.

But the Real book adoption process always takes longer and is more involved that the Imaginary process in the author’s dreams, Oops, there I go third personing again. My dreams. My Erica Jong-like fantasy is not for zipless body f__ks but for effortless book s__es. Which actually happened with Imaginary and Real Keith, but they’re a special case: natural born philosophers, born to be wild--ly enthusiastic about a 3rd century Greek named Plotinus who they want to have coffee with.

I liked how the Keiths could write so much about my book after reading just two paragraphs of it. Good writers can weave a rug from a single thread. It will be interesting to see what happens when they get to the “Myself Is Multiple” chapter. Will they agree with it?

Hilarious “This Land” Bush/Kerry download

“You’re a liberal sissy. You’re a right-wing nut job. This land will surely vote for me.” I’m sure glad that Laurel is such a careful reader of yesterday’s Oregonian Entertainment section, where a great www.jibjab.com online song/cartoon was mentioned. With my 24 Kbps connection I usually don’t have the patience to download 3.7 mb of anything that isn’t essential, but this wait was well worth it.

Give it a try. You’ll be glad you did, whatever your political persuasion. “This Land” has plenty to offend anybody. I especially liked the cameo appearance by Bill Clinton, and also Hillary in a slapping role.

On an unrelated note, if you’re one of my all-too-few loyal book readers (or potential readers), and you’re frustrated with how the online booksellers are treating my newest priceless (well, $16.99) prose, I’m even more frustrated. See my web site for what I’m trying to do about it.

Blogs: fast, funny and totally biased

I finally got around to checking out the blogs mentioned in TIME magazine’s June 21, 2004 issue, in the “Meet Joe Blog” piece. The sub-headline was: “Why are more and more people getting their news from amateur websites called blogs? Because they’re fast, funny, and totally biased.” Right on! We bloggers also can bask in these words (by Lev Grossman, who wrote the article) about blogs:

“They represent—no, they are—the voice of the little guy. And the little guy is a lot smarter than big media might have you think. Blogs showcase some of the smartest, sharpest, writing being published. Bloggers are unconstrained by such journalistic conventions as good taste, accountability and objectivity—and that can be a good thing. Accusations of media bias are thick on the ground these days, and Americans are tired of it. Blogs don’t pretend to be neutral: they’re gleefully, unashamedly biased, and that makes them a lot more fun.”

Just in case you don’t already spend enough time surfing the Internet, here’s a list of many of the blogs mentioned in the article. I haven’t perused any of them in depth. But since we bloggers are supposed to be unashamedly biased, I’ll unashamedly throw out a first-impression quick take.

Fark.com Got sort of a “news of the weird” feel. I like the snap judgments about the items: weird, dumbass, sappy, sad, etc. And I have to give a thumbs-up to any blog that has a “Top Boobies” section.
Instapundit.com Politically oriented blog of a law professor who says that a top interest is the intersection between individual liberty and new technologies. Intelligent and classy, the yin of Fark.com’s yang.
Boingboing.net A little bit of everything. Billed as “a directory of wonderful things.” One of the Classic Blogs, I believe. Entertaining, but a bit unfocused for my left-brain taste.
Wonkette.com Washington (D.C.) gossip. Her home page highlights some “reviews” a blogger would die for: "Profanity-laced and sex-obsessed...[a] vain, young, trash-mouthed skank." "A foulmouthed, inaccurate, opinionated little vixen." "[H]er enthusiasm for penis jokes cannot be as great as her blog suggests"
RebeccaBlood.net Seemingly liberal take on public affairs. Clean and clear. Doesn’t look like there are any penis jokes here. I like the Wonkette better.
TalkingPointsMemo.com Looks like serious political blogging from a serious Washington D.C. writer. Good stuff, though pretty mainstream.
TheMemoryBlog.org Blogger who knows how to use the Freedom of Information Act. Brings out info The Man would rather keep hidden. I think this was the blog that first released the Iraqi war dead photos.
AndrewSullivan.com Political blog by a gay blogger with fairly conservative leanings, which makes him interesting. I like to read his articles in TIME and elsewhere. Intelligent and open-minded.
SlashDot.org A techno-blogger. Billed as “news for nerds.” I couldn’t understand the terms in most of the postings, so I guess I’m not a real nerd. If your everyday vocabulary includes “router,” “Apache” (not the Indian tribe), “wi-fi,” and such, here’s a blog for you.
ArtsandLettersDaily.com Wow! The most intellectually meaty (or tofuy) blog I’ve ever seen. You could spend your whole day working your way down the “Articles of Note, “New Books,” and “Essays and Opinion” headings. Terrific.
BookSlut.com Great name for a book-oriented blog. Seems to feature original (rather than linked) reviews.
BlogDex.net A blog about blogs. Tells you “the most contagious information currently spreading in the weblog community.” Sort of a one-stop blog, I suppose.
Technorati.com Another blog about blogs. Claims to watch over 3 million blogs. I like the “Current Events” link, where you can find out which are the most talked about issues on blogs.

Plotinus's Philosophical Viagra

After plugging my new book about Plotinus yesterday to everybody in my Outlook address book, I got a great idea in a response from one of the recipients. Richard Smith said, “I knew it would happen sooner or later – spiritually oriented junk mail!” “Damn!” I thought, “Why didn’t I think of this myself? Philosophical spam!”

Right away I visualized a whole different approach I could have taken in my email message.

Have trouble keeping it up?
Are you embarrassed when you can’t keep up your side of philosophical conversations? Do you find your arguments getting all limp and soft just when you want them to be Rock Hard and Penetrating?

Relief is at hand: Philosophical Viagra, a maxi-dose of Greek mystic philosophy. For only $16.99 “Return to the One” will be delivered right to your door in a plain box that looks exactly like it contains a book (which it does). Soon you’ll be feeling much more potent and confident. No more worrying about those frustrating Premature Explanations that fail to satisfy.

If your philosophical stance leans more toward the feminine than the masculine, be assured that this product will work great for you too. “Return to the One” will help make your arguments more attractive, working to eliminate flabby thoughts and drooping concepts. You can expect that at least a full size will be added to your chest of philosophical ideas. Imagine the reaction of that special someone when you proudly reveal your more fully formed psyche!

So buy now. Automated systems are waiting at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and BookSense to take your order. Click here if you want to learn more about the benefits of Philosophical Viagra.

Pretty persuasive, huh? Don’t you want to try this? Sure you do. You owe it to yourself. Order now. Become that Philosophical Stud or Studette you’ve always wanted to be.

Sadly, ego-loss didn’t arrive in the mail

I had been waiting and waiting for ego-loss to arrive in the mail. When the envelope finally was delivered on Saturday you can imagine how excited I was. I’ve been meditating every day for nigh on thirty-five years, and so far I’ve made scant progress in laying aside that devilishly strong “Me! Me! Me!” part of me that doesn’t want to stop thinking about Me, Me, Me.

But I was expecting that one glance at what was inside the envelope was going to produce a short-cut to satori land. For this was a copy of an article that I had written for a spiritual magazine, “RS Greetings,” as noted in a weblog posting a few months back. I’d been told that the magazine was going to publish the article, but I had let my subscription lapse. So a friend told me when the issue came out and agreed to send me a copy of my piece.

What does this have to do with ego-loss? Well, the magazine’s editor had told me that it was now their policy to not print authors' names, so I was going to be Anonymous. Not even that, actually. Just blank. I argued some with her, not so much because I love to see my name in print (though I do), but because this magazine is published by a group called “Science of the Soul.” What kind of a science is it, I asked, that puts forth anonymous “research findings”?

Admittedly, my article was more humorous than serious. Still, I tried to make some substantive points about the nature of happiness, and why material things usually don’t bring us the satisfaction we expect they will. I might have made some errors in what I said. I might quoted somebody incorrectly. I might have misinterpreted some happiness research. I might have drawn the wrong conclusions from the articles I cited.

If I did any of these things, I’d like to know about it from someone more knowledgeable than me. Heck, even if they weren’t more knowledgeable and simply disagreed with me about something, I’d like to know about that too. So I told the editor that their Anonymous policy prevented readers from offering valuable feedback, and from authors learning from those readers. That’s the way of science, open discussion and review of purported findings.

The magazine powers-that-be apparently felt, however, that not publishing authors’ names was spiritually healthy. I guess not being recognized for a charitable article contribution earns more karmic Humble Points than having your name attached to it. OK, I could sort of understand that.

So I was eager to find out what would happen when I opened the envelope and didn’t see my name associated with the article. I’ve seen enough movies to fantasize about what might happen: as I tear open the seal, a bright light glows from within and flows out of the envelope, enveloping me, appropriately enough, in a cozy warm cocoon of enlightenment.

Or so I hoped. Sadly, my first glance was of a misspelled article title that I had labored to come up with. It’s “enlightenment” not “enlightment”! Then, I had an irresistible urge to get a big thick pen and write in my name. Guess the ego-loss thing didn’t work.

So I learned that there is no short cut to enlightenment. Or even enlightment. Guess I’ll have to take the long route, which I probably would traverse a lot more quickly if I took to heart the great cartoon that Bart Goldman drew--included at the end of the article. Bart and I collaborated on a series of cartoons some years ago, he supplying all the artistic talent and me supplying some concepts. Glad one of them finally got to be published.

For those interested, here’s another copy of my “Secrets of Happiness” a.k.a. “My Mini Enlightenment” article. It’s the same as in previous posting, but hopefully formatted to be easier to read.
Download rs_greetings_article_204.doc

Top Ten Reasons to buy my book

At long last, my book about Plotinus, a third century mystic Greek philosopher, is available for purchase. At the moment a photo of the “Return to the One” cover is missing from some of the Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and BookSense listings. You can mosey on over to this Unlimited Publishing “Return to the One” page if you want to read more about the book and have a vision of what the book looks like.

Why did I write this book? Hard to say. Like life itself, and consciousness itself, what we do in our lives with our consciousnesses is a mystery. We make up reasons for why we do something, but whether the reasons we weave bear any relation to rock-bottom reality is another question. What I do know is that I've come to love Plotinus, in the best Platonic sense.

On p. xvii of the book I say, “Up to a few years ago I knew next to nothing about his teachings. But I was strongly drawn to his mystic philosophy once I started to seriously study the Enneads. For most of my fifty-five years I’ve cast my intellectual net widely in the world’s ocean of philosophical, religious, mystical, and metaphysical literature. Yet I’ve never found a spiritual system so simultaneously appealing to the mind and the heart, to reason and intuition, to logic and passion.”

So here’s my Top Ten Reasons to read “Return to the One.” Half are serious, half are light-hearted. That fits with the style of this book, which one advance reviewer said is “written in a lively, accessible way.”

10. Plotinus espouses a universal non-religious metaphysics that is wonderfully refreshing in these times of “my God is better than your God!” pseudo-spirituality.
9. Most of the chapters are just 4-6 pages long. This is a book that begs for bathroom reading.
8. The philosophy of Plotinus and Plato was highly praised by St. Augustine, who incorporated many Platonic notions into his metaphysics. So Christians will find in Plotinus strong echoes of their own faith.
7. With the Athens Olympics slated for August, no coffee table will be trendily complete without a Greek-related book on it (so buy two, one for the bathroom and one for the living room).
6. Plotinus doesn’t ask you to leave your rationality at the church/ temple/ mosque/ wherever door. His spiritual philosophy makes tremendous sense, and also is tremendously inspiring.
5. You’ll be able to casually throw “Well, as Plotinus says…” into your conversations, thereby simultaneously perplexing and impressing those with whom you speak.
4. The spiritual truths Plotinus points us toward are to be found within our own selves, not without. So there’s no need to run around looking for wisdom and well-being in all the wrong places. Meaning, anywhere outside of your own self.
3. You won’t be able to write and get a response from Bill Clinton after you read “My Life.” But if you let me know what you think of “Return to the One,” we’ll have a real interchange.
2. This book can be read again and again (I’ve done so dozens of times), and you’ll never fully plumb the depths of Plotinus’ meaning. Colloquially speaking, this dude is deep, man.
1. Plotinus’ philosophy is called Neoplatonism. Its central feature is the One (or what many call “God”). In the Matrix, Keanu Reeves’ character is named “Neo,” and Morpheus believes that Neo is the One. So is Plotinus cool, or what?

In honor of my book’s release, I have added a “Plotinus” category to HinesSight. Here I will place Plotinus-related postings, which hopefully will include laudatory reviews. Or, maybe not. As much as I like praise, I try to remember than with writing it’s the from-the-heart saying that is important, not how others respond to what I’ve said.

View my blogified photo (quickly)

When Jack Bogdanski emailed me and asked to use my recently-posted photo of the Three Sisters on his way-cool and way-popular Jack Bog’s Blog, I was thrilled.

Wow! I never dreamed I’d be almost a professional published photographer, the “almost” a necessary qualifier because (1) naturally I’m not being paid for use of the photo, (2) the heading of a weblog isn’t really a publication, and (3) simply snapping a digital photo when the camera is on automatic barely qualifies as photography (I did, however, press the zoom lens button with my right index finger, which involved some minimal decision-making).

All that aside, I’m thrilled that the cropped photo looks so nice on Jack’s weblog, viewable by clicking on the link above. However, I’m not thrilled that Jack has decided to close down his weblog on July 6. I’ve only been a reader of Jack Bog’s Blog for a fairly short time, but I’ve enjoyed it, and will miss it.

Maybe if we all send out a message to the universe, “Keep going, Jack,” we can create an altered reality in the Force/Tao/Providence/Destiny/Karma that guides such matters. I do respect Jack’s reasons for taking a break from his blog. But shutting down an interesting, thoughtful, informative weblog is a loss to the Blogosphere.

There’s still thirteen days until July 6. A lot of mind-changing can happen in that time. If not, thanks for giving my photo a nice home for a few weeks, Jack. May the spirit of the beautiful Three Sisters always be with you.

Eccentrics make the world go unround

When you attend a meeting of 500 aspiring mystics of both Eastern and Western persuasions, as I did last weekend, you’re bound to run into some interesting people. But there is “interesting” and there is “eccentric,” the latter being a pearl of greater price. For eccentrics, by definition, make the world go unround. They remind us that neat and tidy isn’t nature’s way. Rivers don’t take a straight course to the sea. Trees sprout branches in every direction.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some wonderful eccentrics. Eric was a friend of my youth. A few years older than me, he would ride his bike down the highway and whip it with a riding crop while wearing his authentic white Bengal Lancers helmet with a plume on top. We had great times playing Embassy, dressed up in his astounding collection of British army/navy surplus attire (after the Brits were kicked out of India, it seems that a lot of equipment went on the market in the 1950s). Eric was a true eccentric.

My Uncle Jack played the bagpipes. To people. Also to cows, who would moo in return. And to dogs, who would howl in return. He was a profound practical joker, never growing up even as he grew in years. He was astoundingly direct, even to a fault. Once my mother, Carolyn, and I took a train from California all the way across the country to visit him in Massachusetts. I remember us stepping onto the Boston station platform and hearing Uncle Jack’s effusive greeting in his New England accent: “My god, Carolyn, you’ve gained so much weight!” Uncle Jack was a true eccentric.

After I gave my talk at the Science of the Soul meeting last Sunday, I went backstage and got some congratulations from a few people. One was an English guy a bit older than me who I had corresponded with by email, but had never met. Right away I felt like we had been friends for years, especially after he said, “I liked your talk. You remind me of me.” Exactly.

William Pryor is a writer, an ex-addict, a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, a poet, a publisher. And, I could tell instantly, a true eccentric. In the best sense. Meaning, William, like Eric, like Uncle Jack, is absolutely himself. Not someone trying to play the role of an eccentric, or someone trying to not play the role of an eccentric, or someone not trying to not play…(I’m starting to confuse myself). No, an eccentric is so really true to himself or herself there’s no room for the usual interpersonal bullshit that wastes so much time and puts up so many barriers.

Five minutes after I met William, as we were walking along with Laurel to find a place on the lawn to have a chat, I showed him the copy of my book, “Return to the One,” that I had read from during my talk. I said, “Well, I just got this advance copy, so I wanted to use it in speaking about Plotinus, but at least I didn’t use this spiritual setting to overtly plug my own book.” With that, William started slapping me on the shoulder with the book, yelling “No! no! no!” And laughing.

Touché. Yes, he was right. I did indeed have in mind that by being so seemingly humble (not mentioning the title of the book, not holding it up for people to see, not even mentioning that it soon could be bought), this low-key good-karma approach to plugging still would lead to some sales. I liked how William playfully punctured my pretense. Eccentrics make you comfortable with being as imperfect or as perfect as you really are.

Sitting and talking with him was a welcome change of pace from the preachy “thou shalt” tone that pervaded some other messages I encountered during the weekend. Such as the “No cell phones. No cameras. No PDAs. No voice recorders” signs at the doors of the meeting hall. No one could offer a good reason why cell phones couldn’t simply be turned off. Or why photographs of the Science of the Soul facilities couldn’t be taken. It was just a rule. An opportunity for bureaucracy to try to make an eccentric world into a perfect circle. Which can’t happen. Which shouldn’t happen.

One day I left my cell phone in my hip bag instead of leaving it in my car, as the meeting organizers wanted, or checking it before entering the hall, another option. I felt deliciously rebellious. The next day, to avoid falling into a rebellious rut, I left my cell phone in our hotel room. For the first time, when I walked into the hall, an Indian sevadar (volunteer) looked at me and said, “Cell phone? Cell phone?” I replied, absolutely honestly, “No.” I felt deliciously obedient.

William is on a book tour, promoting his “The Survival of the Coolest: An Addiction Memoir.” I’ll let you know how I like the book after I read it. I hugely enjoyed William himself, so I suspect I’m going to also enjoy his writing.

An author’s scariest moment

An author’s scariest moment is when the first advance copies of a book arrive from the printer. Also, this is an author’s most wonderful moment. But scariness precedes the wonderfulness. “Are the pages printed all screwy? Is the cover color wrong? What major typo did we miss?”

Yesterday Laurel yelled from the front door at me: “A box just came. It looks like books.” Oh, God, I thought. This is it. My writing life is over. And it is just beginning. Both. Neither. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t want to go up and open the box. I dearly wanted to go up and open the box. Dearly finally won out over didn’t.

Here’s what I found. Actually, I found 20 copies, but 4 seemed enough to demonstrate the physical reality of what I’ve spent several years working on.

369 pages. I’ve read and re-read them so many times I almost know them by heart. But holding a real book in my hand makes all the words seem brand new. I’m 125 pages into “Return to the One.” Blessedly, I haven’t found anything really amiss so far.

My only scare came when I got to the First is Formless chapter, where I couldn’t resist quoting a poem my ten-year-old self wrote. It used to begin, “Look up to the heavens. What do you see? Tiny pinpoints of light. But is that all? Look past the stars, into the blackness of the void.” Hey, it’s pretty good for a kid.

But in the book it begins: “Look up the heavens.” A chill ran down my spine when I first read that. My poem had been changed!!! Stop the presses!!! Then I calmed down. I’m sure this change was in the galleys my editor sent back to me. I just didn’t catch the altered wording.

Then, driving into town yesterday, I began thinking about looking. “Look up the tree.” “Look up the river.” “Look up the road.” OK, that sounds fine. So why did “Look up the heavens” sound wrong to me? Because I was used to the way I had written it. Just like I’m used to so many other things in life that, when they change, I go, “Hey! What gives?! This isn’t the way things should be!”

I’ve got a chapter called “Philosophy as a Way of Life.” The theme is that a philosophy that isn’t consonant with our life isn’t real. It is just ideas, wordplay. Here I am, writing about how formlessness is the highest reality, and I get all freaked out when the form of the first line of my 45-year-old poem changes. How philosophical is that?

Well, if I really knew everything that I write about, I probably wouldn’t have a drive to write. I’d simply go around with a smile on my face, not saying a word. Until then, writing and reading is necessary.

Keep $17 open on your VISA/MasterCard credit line when July 1 approaches. I’m told that is when “Return to the One” should be available for on-line ordering. The book has to be held back for a while to give pre-publication reviewers a chance to look at it.

How everyone can write for a living, guaranteed

From an essay in “Writers and their Craft” by novelist Frederick Busch: “I write for a living. I write, that is to say, for my life—for my life’s sake. Which is to say: when I write, I consider my life to be at stake; the values that help me to measure it, and the moments, memories, and emotions of it that I cherish—the people, therefore, whose presence in it makes me want to keep experiencing my life—all are at risk when I work. It feels that way to me. I believe the feeling to be true, and I write from that belief.”

Nicely said. A blogger’s creed.

Writer’s revenge: reject the rejection slip

James Alexander Thom has a great piece in the Spring 2004 Author’s Guild Bulletin: “Rejection Flip.” I sometimes wonder whether forking out $90 a year to belong to the Author’s Guild makes sense, but articles like this one are priceless.

Plus, I get a certain satisfaction in turning to the last page of each issue of the Bulletin and reading the names of some fellow members who serve on the Guild Council: Judy Blume, Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Crichton, Erica Jong, Scott Turow. Writing fame and fortune have evaded me so far, but hope springs eternal that someday I can at least stand on the fringes of such well-known company.

Anyway, Thom begins by saying, “One thing that will bring a smile to a writer’s face is hearing another writer talk about his rejection slips. The smile is usually rueful or wistful; sometimes it’s a smirk. When we talk about our rejection slips, we are family.” He goes on to relate his early history with rejection slips, then tells about his inspiration to reject the rejections:

“I became a connoisseur of rejection slips. Some were classy, and reflected well on the publishers. Others were poorly typed out, on cheap paper. Some came with typographical errors or bad grammar.

“Some of those I would send back, with a note saying they weren’t up to my standard: ‘Thank you for sending me this rejection slip. Unfortunately, I must return it. It begins to lag in the second paragraph, and the conclusion seems somehow contrived….’ Or, ‘After careful reading of your rejection of my story, I must recommend that you revise it, or seek the help of a professional editor. You seem to have trouble with punctuation and dangling participles. Sincerely…
P.S. If you resubmit this rejection slip, please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope.

“Well, why not? I had as much right to dislike their rejection slips as they had to dislike my manuscripts. I worked a year on a book; it merited a thoughtful turndown. A professional rejection slip should be a little masterpiece.”

I love this. I (almost) look forward to getting my next rejection slip.

Some writing-related snippets

Orblogs: Community of Oregon Weblogs—This is a great service to the Oregon weblogging world. I’ve learned about some interesting weblogs and met, cyberspacely, some equally interesting webloggers. The first few lines of postings pop up here almost as soon as they are posted. I love to troll down the listings and see the wonderfully wide variety of subjects people are writing about.

Child Safety 101—I talked today with a friend, Benny Mares, who wrote this book and told me that this Child Safety 101 website is up. Click on “Book” and you’ll find a nice blurb from Laurel. Benny has had an interesting career as a bodyguard, plus other security-related jobs, and now has turned his attention to keeping kids safer. I recommended Unlimited Publishing to Benny and am happy that his book ended up in such good hands. Marc Klass of the Klass Kids Foundation has praised the book, which is helping Benny’s promotional efforts get off to a good start.

Dan Poynter’s Para Publishing—If you’re a writer or a small/new publisher, here’s an excellent source of information and advice that covers every stage of the writing and publishing process. I recently forked out some $$$ to download Poynter’s 35 page piece on “Book Reviews: From Pre-publication Galleys Through a Continuing Review Program.” A lot of stuff on the Internet is just fluff, but this had lots of substantial practical tips about getting a book reviewed.

Using Poynter’s publication, yesterday I came up with a list of pre-publication reviewers I’d like Unlimited Publishing to send an advance copy or bound galley of “Return to the One” to. It was sort of dismaying to read on most of the reviewer websites (Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal, The New York Times Book Review, etc.) about how many books they receive, and how few they can review.

Kirkus Reviews, for example, says they get over 200 titles a day. Wow. Their paper recycler must be ecstatic to have that account. But, hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And there is something strangely satisfying about the thought of having my book end up in a New York Times Book Review recycling bin. I sent my first book to the New Yorker, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be reviewed, just to be able to have the satisfaction of knowing that the book ended up in the hallowed halls of the New Yorker editorial offices, if only briefly. Well, maybe it just made it to the mail room. But still…I can say that my book was in the New Yorker (building).

“Return to the One” revealed

click to enlarge
Here’s the cyberspace unveiling of the cover of my soon-to-be-published book, “Return to the One—Plotinus’s Guide to God-Realization.” This afternoon I sent the laboriously-compiled index (see posting below) off to the book designer, Charles King, which means that I’m done! Done with the book, that is. Soon come the practicalities of helping to sell and publicize the book. Which I guess I’ve already started doing in this low-key fashion.

You can be sure that I’ll let HinesSight readers know, via the weblogging equivalent of a trumpet chorus, when the book is published and possible to be purchased (you’ll get a wealth of spiritual inspiration and Greek philosophy for $16.99).

I like the cover. Charles of Cox-King Multimedia did a fine job. About all I told Charles was that I wanted a modern feel for the cover, rather than the Classic Greek Look favored by most scholars who write about Greek philosophy, because I wrote this book in an informal, popular style, with a healthy dose of 21st century scientific facts and attitude mixed in with Plotinus’s ageless mystic wisdom.

Charles copy-edited the manuscript, so he has a good understanding of Plotinus’s teachings. The One, or “God” if you like, is far beyond human the bounds of human reason, utterly ineffable, without any qualities that we can begin to comprehend. So I like how Charles reflects some central elements of Plotinus’s philosophy on the cover.

The One is the source from which the cosmos emanates, the light from which all lesser lights draw their radiance. This includes the light of each person’s consciousness, which we may call “soul.” Plotinus’s message can be summarized simply: self is the soul is spirit is the source, the One. To know God is to know our true self. So returning to the One also is returning to our own self.

I have to admit that I like how Charles made the circular light “rays” line up directly from the central shining radiance to the corner of my photo. Sounds a bit egotistical, but Plotinus says that everyone, me, you, and everybody else, has a direct connection with the One. The trick is finding it, and tracing it back to our source.
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Oh, the joys of writing

I’ve just finished the index for my book about the Greek philosopher Plotinus: “Return to the One—Plotinus’s Guide to God-Realization.” There are various ways to prepare an index. The approach I used must be the hardest on the back and the knees, but fortunately I don’t have any back/knee problems—until now, at least. I scattered 18 pages with index entries in a semi-circle around me on the floor. Then I leaned over and jotted down the page number(s) that had entries for various subjects, working from the galleys that the book designer had sent me.

It took me three days, much stretching to get the kinks out, and many cups of coffee to get the cobwebs out. The next time you casually consult an index, murmur a little “thank you” to the indexer, one of those unsung heroes who do boring jobs that make life easier for other people, but who nobody ever thinks about.

Given the rather noxious authorial task I had to endure today, this wasn’t the ideal moment for a friend to send me a link to a Salon article called “The Confessions of a Semi-Successful Author.” Anonymously written by one Jane Austen Doe (for obvious reasons), the piece starts out on just the note I wanted to hear, what with my back so sore and my knees so achy: “I’ve published several books, won adoring reviews, and even sold a few copies. But I’ve made almost no money and had my heart broken. Here’s everything you don’t want to know about how publishing really works.”

Well, the article confirmed for me the wisdom of my setting up a publishing company, Adrasteia Publishing, with which I am co-publishing “Return to the One” with Unlimited Publishing. Sure, it’s great if a writer can find a big-time publisher willing to pay him or her big-time advances/royalties, and devote big-time resources to big-time promotion/publicity efforts. But most writers, like Jane Doe, are medium-time (or midlist) at best, and often farther down the publishing food chain than that.

My first book sold 10,000 copies. My second book, admittedly published non-commercially in India and sold dirt-cheap, has sold at least 25,000 copies, maybe more. So if I stretch things a bit, this sort of makes me midlist, at least in my own mind (where it counts). But I had a frustrating experience trying to find a publisher for “Return to the One,” just as Jane Doe did for her various books—and she is much better known and better reviewed than I am.

So, in addition to thanking indexers, the next time you read a midlist book (written, that is, by a good but little-known writer) thank the author—who probably is making much less than minimum wage for all the months and years he or she put into that labor of love (I am referring, of course, to the minimum wage in China, not the United States).

Thank heavens: there is a God!

News item I just noticed…“'Dawn of the Dead' debuts with $27.3 million, dethroning 'Passion'” And, no, I haven’t seen “The Passion of the Christ.” My distaste for the movie is based on utterly sound philosophical grounds, discussed previously in my “Plotinus and the Passion of the Christ” posting. Since my book about Plotinus, a marvelous 3rd century Greek mystic philosopher, is about to be published, you will find me shamelessly using every opportunity to work, and rework, Plotinus into this weblog. My (probably vain) hope is that these humble meme-seeds somehow will cause interest in Plotinus’s admirably non-religious approach to spirituality to propagate through cyberspace. One thing the world desperately needs now is less religion and more spirituality.

Plotinus passed on

Anti-climatic but deeply meaningful: that’s how I recently viewed the slowly moving “…% complete” Norton Antivirus indicator as my rather large (2 mb) Return to the One file passed into cyberspace on its way to Charles King, the book designer who works with Unlimited Publishing—with whom I’m co-publishing the book, under the guise of Adrasteia Publishing, my newly established (and largely illusory) publishing identity.

So now the book is out of my hands, though it will return to me, certainly, for review, proof-reading, and (ugh…) preparation of an index after the interior design is complete. After years of work on this philosophical labor of love, it’s hard to believe that all that labor is soon going to result in a delivery—a baby book!, so adorable, so hard to resist, I certainly hope.

But as I told Charles at the end of my cover-email message, it hardly matters to me how many copies of Return to the One are sold. And that, really, is the truth. As is true of so much else in life, in writing the process is the main product. Why else would writers write? It can’t be for the money—picayune—or for the fame, usually equally negligible. No, it has to be because writing is its own reward. After all these years I still haven’t figured out what that reward consists of, for it is almost impossible to describe, or define. But I feel the satisfaction inside me with every word that passes from my mind to screen, or paper.

Taking a Plotinian, or Platonic, perspective, seemingly what is going on with writing is somehow connected with the mysterious interface between the ineffable, intuitive, inner World of Forms, and the obvious, objective, outward sensible world, where what is within the psyche is transferred, via the medium of matter, to what is without. According to Plotinus, this microcosmic creative process mirrors the macrocosmic creation—in which the all-powerful Soul of the All, source of the laws of nature, transfers the spiritual logos into this material realm.

Well, if that last paragraph didn’t make sense to you, you’ll just have to buy the book. Which, the gods of publishing willing, should be available in the spring. I also told Charles that even if I hadn’t written this book, it still would be one of my favorite metaphysical/philosophical books. And I’m confident this will be true for other like-minded people also. Not so much because of my writing, though, in my unhumble opinion the writing is quite good, but because Plotinus is such a marvelous thinker and sage. Non-religious yet deeply spiritual; highly rational yet deeply mystical. What’s not to like about him? Answer: his often exceedingly dense and confusing prose.

Thus I’m both pleased and proud to be, to my knowledge, the first person in some seventeen hundred years (Plotinus died in 270, and his writings were edited into their present form soon thereafter) to write a truly popular book about his teachings. Maybe someone else has done so, but their work isn’t evident on Amazon.com, whereas fairly soon Return to the One will be. I don’t want to get too worked up about finishing this book—Howard Dean just showed us the drawbacks of expressing too much outward emotion—yet every time I read through the manuscript (and that is lots of times), I feel like I’m touching the edges of the truth about our cosmos, and the way the world works.

That is, the truth isn’t being expressed by Plotinus, or, even more so, by me. But Plotinus, is equal to the greatest mystical writers of all time in being able to point the reader toward the capital T Truth that lies within every human soul. So I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have been able to tag along, so to speak, on the coattails of Plotinus during all the time I’ve been working on this book. I almost feel like I know the guy, I’ve spent so many hours, days, and months inside his head, via his writings. I never get tired of hearing him speak of the One that we seek, but never find, in outward pursuits, but who constitutes the core of our innermost being—and indeed can be said to be us, when we’ve let go of all that is not truly us.

Anyway, it’s great to have taken another significant step on the publishing road. I never tire of going to the Unlimited Publishing web site page where I can read that Return to the One is “coming soon.” Inward. Outward. Whatever. I look forward to it happening.

I’m a publisher!!!

Oh, man, I’m so excited. I’m a publisher! No, wait, I misspoke, and left off two exclamation marks: I’m a publisher!!! I can prove it. I have my not-really-framable piece of paper from the corporation commissioner that says I’m doing business under an assumed business name: Adrasteia Publishing. If I’d wanted to pay $10 more I could have gotten a rather cheesy only-slightly-more-suitable-for-framing certificate featuring a background photo of the Oregon state capital, but I decided thriftiness was going to be one of the hallmarks of Adrasteia Publishing—along with, hopefully, publishing (my own books, of course).

After much exploring in the dense and dark jungles of Publisher Land, I think I’ve finally hit upon a viable for my four, count them, four, books that either need to get back in print, commercially in print, or just plain in print. Naturally my first choice was to find a publisher who would (a) pay me a princely sum to publish my books; (b) get them in print just the way I had written them, namely, without any significant editorial changes, (c) was committed to keeping them in print for ever and ever, and (d) would promote the living daylights out of them.

Many times I found a firm that met all of these criteria. But then I would wake up and have to go make coffee. I kept hoping that my dream would become reality, but that isn’t the way life usually works. Reality makes reality. Anyway, I’ve finally linked up with a publisher who, by all accounts, has found a way to meld the benefits of print on demand (POD) and traditional publishing approaches: Unlimited Publishing. You can see from their web site that they take a markedly different approach from the run-of-the-mill POD firm. Well, you would be able to see that if you had checked into as many POD web sites as I have. But take my word for it, it’s true.

Or, don’t take my word for it, and contrast Unlimited Publishing with one of the churn-the-books-out-and-take-their-money firms, Trafford Publishing Not that there is anything inherently wrong with Trafford if you just want to get your book on Amazon and sell a hundred copies to friends and family. But I have higher aspirations, for I too am a publisher (albeit with no published books yet, but let’s not quibble with details).

Unlimited will be the distributing publisher of Return to the One and, hopefully, my other books. Adrasteia will be the contributing publisher. While I haven’t yet understood all that distinguishes us, I have already learned enough about the trade to figure out that Unlimited Publishing will distribute my books, and Adrasteia Publishing will contribute the books, hence, our titles. Ah yes, Adrasteia also will contribute some money to Unlimited, as is the case with co-publishing arrangements, but the green stuff theoretically will flow the other way eventually, in the form of royalties.

Adrasteia means “inescapable” in Greek. Plotinus uses the term, once, and I liked the way it sounds. Adrasteia also is a goddess, one of Zeus’ daughters, and I felt that it wouldn’t hurt to form an alliance with the progeny of a powerful Greek god. “Zeus, how about throwing some thunderbolts at the publishers who have sent me rejection letters? I could give you a list of names and addresses, but since you’re a god, I assume you already know who should be thunderbolted. Your buddy, Brian (P.S. Did I mention that I’ve named my publishing company after your daughter?)”

I’m dreaming of killing someone

Actually, several someones. My fantasy starts with the Fulton County (Georgia) school system, which recently expelled a high school freshman for writing a fictional tale in her private journal about a student who dreams she kills a teacher.

I saw this girl, Rachel Boim, interviewed on CNN today. You couldn’t ask for a more intelligent, articulate, and mature 14-year old than Rachel—who undoubtedly surpasses the Fulton County school administrators in all of these qualities. When asked if she would write the tale again, given what has just happened, she wisely said, “Of course I would. It was just a story, something I made up, not anything I would actually do.” Today her suspension was rescinded, thank heavens. I’ll contribute to her defense fund, if asked, and buy a copy of her story if she gets it published.

Which brings me to my next fantasy set of killings. I say “set,” because this is would be a massive publishacide, encompassing everybody who had anything to do with setting up the book publishing “system” (using this term in the most ironic sense) in this country. I suspect that if Rachel continues with her writing—her parents describe her as a gifted writer—she eventually will share my publishacide fantasies. The book publishing business is similar to many ways to the U.S. health care system: when it works, it works really well (for some people); when it doesn’t work, it works really shitty (for lots more people than for whom it works reallywell).

In my never-ending quest to explore publishing options for my four books, two of which haven’t been published yet, commercially or non-commercially, I’ve been delving more into the world of POD (print on demand) and self-publishing firms. Not that this is my first choice for my books, as I’m still pursuing a traditional publishing approach, which, practically speaking, requires an agent, and a quasi-traditional “co-publishing” approach, which requires some money. If both of these avenues fail to pan out, then POD and self-publishing are viable alternatives.

Clea Saal has self-published, using print on demand (POD) technology, a helpful book, “The Clearly Confusing World of Self-Publishing & POD.” She also has an equally helpful web site that lists and critiques the major POD/self-publishing firms. I’ve poured over most of these firms’ web sites, and have learned a lot about the clearly confusing world of which Saal writes. Confusing, largely because the publishing business at large is so confusing.

Distributors. Wholesalers. Publishers. Authors. Bookstores. Online book sellers. Readers. How the heck do all of these fit together? Not very well, that’s for sure. Like sausage-making, the more you learn about how the book business works, the more you question whether you really wanted to know what you’ve learned. Very much like the health care system, lots of money flows around the book publishing industry, but few people are happy with the system. The rare success stories of publishers or writers who hit it rich grab our attention. However, the system as a whole is frustratingly illogical and inefficient.

Publishers often print many more thousands of copies of a book than will ever be sold. POD technology allows books to be printed one at a time, after an order is made, just like Dell makes its computers. No waste this way, which makes trees happy. But most bookstores won’t order POD books, even if a customer asks for one, because they usually can’t be returned. Bookstores often return books, since they don’t have to pay for the books they order until they are sold. So a publisher may think they’ve sold lots of copies of a book, and then the copies come back to them months later—sometimes with covers torn and all beat up, but still returnable.

Few “real” publishers use POD technology, in part because this is the way almost all self-publishers (a.k.a. “vanity presses”) print their books. So they don’t want to be tainted with the print on demand stigma. But often it’s the most efficient way to print books. And many POD books are better written than their traditionally published brethren. True, many aren’t, but can’t the marketplace decide which books are worthy to be bought, and which aren’t?

Do we look down on painters, or potters, because they don’t sell their creations through an established art gallery? When you go to an art fair, and look at artists in their booths, do you think, “What losers…they couldn’t sell their stuff in a real store, so they have to do their selling on their own.” I don’t think this, because I can tell that these artists have more talent than a lot of the kitsch you find in a “real” art gallery. So why is it that the pejorative term, “vanity,” is attached to writers who publish their own books? Why don’t we call painters or potters who produce and sell their art themselves “vain”?

Part of me wants to go a non-traditional publishing route with my books, because the usual way of printing, marketing, and selling books is so screwy. But I’ll admit that another part—a pretty big part—would be happy to sell out and join the current system. Make me an offer. Everyone has their price. Writers are pretty cheap. Will work for coffee, a laptop, and a high-speed Internet connection, only two of which I enjoy now.

Chimps join we “Homo’s”

If you haven’t read the news about chimpanzees being even more closely related to humans than was previously thought, here’s a link to an article in the online version of Discovery magazine. Serious thought is being given to adding a species to the Homo genus, of which Homo sapiens currently is the only member. I love the idea of having chimpanzees join us in the Homo club. We humans need reminding that we are animals, and should be treating our kin with more respect. Like, by not eating them. Or hunting them. Or mistreating them in zoos and circuses.

Reading about the new chimp research, which found that humans actually share more than 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, reminded me of a few paragraphs I wrote in my book, Life is Fair, some years back. Here’s the excerpt:

Though many details remain to be explained by Darwin’s theory of how life on earth has evolved through supposedly random genetic mutations and natural selection of the most viable mutations, there is general agreement that modern humans are links of an ancestral chain that extends far, far back into prehistoric times.

Chimpanzees share at least 98% of the DNA possessed by people. So from a genetic perspective, only about 1 part in 50 of human beings differs from a life-form that most would regard as decidedly “sub-human.” This means that there is a rather strange dichotomy between scientific fact and social custom.

Though people basically are highly evolved animals (spend a few hours in any singles bar to confirm this), we still act as if there were a great divide between ourselves and other species—even the primates, with whom we share the greatest kinship. Otherwise, why would we find it so acceptable to keep chimpanzees confined in public viewing areas (zoos) for our amusement, when no civilized society would condone this being done to people?

Backups are beautiful

That's my sentiment at the moment, having just reinstalled the blogging software after more than a week in the deeper depths of upgrade-to-a-larger-hard-disk-hell. Reinstalling, and then posting an "I'm back" message resulted in the disappearance of every single trace of the old HinesSight postings--which, in retrospect, was entirely predictable, since the newly installed software had me starting from scratch. The message, my friends, is to faithfully backup your precious whatever. This is relatively easy to do with computer whatevers; I just had to copy a folder from a backup drive to the new drive. Its a bigger problem with more personal whatevers. How do we handle the unexpected loss of something that previously was precious to us?

If this restoration hadn't worked, I was prepared to write the first post to a newborn HinesSight along the lines of, "Everything changes, including this weblog. It's all gone, and I'm starting over." But those loftily detached words wouldn't have matched how I really felt, which would have more along the lines of, "God damn it! This f-----g computer just lost all of the posts that I spent many hours writing, including the photo of our dog. That sucks, big time!" Someday I hope I get to the point that no matter what I lose, I truly feel that if it can be lost, it isn't real, and not worth losing a tear over. That day isn't now, though. I'm happy to be back HinesSighting, with a 60gb hard drive whose grand size matches my verbosity.

HinesSight interruptus

My sister recently reminded me that it had been five days since my last posting. Indefensible! I shall punish myself severely, in a fashion that I cannot let myself know, or I would be able to take steps to avoid it. Let the punishment fall when I least expect it, which it will, since it isn't known even to myself. My only defense, and it is a weak one, is that dear Dell 8200 is still suffering from some start-up and performance problems, not unlike yours truly. So I continue to spend more time than usual fussing with computer maintenance issues. Tomorrow the patient is going to spend a few days in rehabilitation, and I hope he comes back in much better health. A friend, much more knowledgeable than I about the arcana of Windows XP and what-not, will attempt to restore Dellie to good working order, during which time (hopefully just a few days) the world shall have to suffer through no updates to HinesSight. We are, naturally, still contactable via email at [email protected] and [email protected] since Laurel's computer will keep us in touch cyberspacely.

Almost a fan

I was so thrilled yesterday to get some fan email! Well, almost. I suppose I should have recognized right away from the message that something was wrong, but my desperate need for praise and approval blinded me for a while. Here's the message, with my (almost) fan's name omitted: DEAR MR. HINES,
MY NAME IS...AND I AM IN FIRST GRADE. I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO COME TO OLD BETHPAGE GRADE SCHOOL NEXT WEEK. I READ YOUR BOOK, THE MONSTER'S TEST, IN SCHOOL TODAY. I LOVED IT. YOU ARE A VERY GOOD AUTHOR. I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET YOU.
YOUR FRIEND...

Hmmmmm, I thought, I really like that "You are a very good author" line. But I forgot I was going to Old Bethpage Grade School. In fact, I've also forgotten that there is such a school. Further, I can't remember writing "The Monster's Test." But, aside from these minor details, I got some fan email! It's great that a first grader would appreciate my writing so much. However, a little Googling revealed that there is a Brian Heinz who wrote a children's book by this name, so I reluctantly wrote back to the (almost) fan that he mistook the cake mix Hines for the ketchup Heinz. I also urged him to keep writing, because he has a nice honest style. Direct. Short sentences. No spelling errors. Just needs to take his finger off the Caps Lock key.

Garden Poet needs a weblog, don't you think?

I got to know the Garden Poet, a.k.a Keith Ecklund, when we hired him to do some extensive landscaping on our previously unpoetic yard. Whereas another prospective landscaper was going to prepare a detailed computerized plan, showing every detail of what they planned to do, Keith basically showed us the landscaper's equivalent of the proverbial business plan sketched on the back of a cocktail napkin, a very sketchy conceptual outline, and said "trust me."

We did, and we ended up loving his work. I enjoyed looking out the window and seeing Keith perched on the seat of his idling tractor, calmly pondering the seemingly chaotic piles of dirt he had been bulldozing around. Then, still planless, aside from his inner vision, he would put the tractor into gear and set about on the next phase of his artistic creation. We never had much of a clue about what he was doing until it was done; then we liked it (usually).

Keith just sent me some HinesSight-stimulated thoughts that beg to be posted for wider consumption. Keith says that he has thought about starting his own weblog many times, but gets cold feet. I think he needs to get a footwarmer. Anyone who can write, and think, like this is a born blogger.

Positivity appreciated, feedback welcomed

I've already heard from some new HinesSight viewers (well, almost all the viewers are new, actually), who said some nice things about our humble weblog--especially the photo of Serena, which seems to be the favorite post so far. Some problems also were pointed out, and I'm trying to fix them. I'm slowly learning some of the tricks of the trade of the Internet, such as "don't reduce the margin of Word files unless you want some browsers to see what you've written as a teeny-tiny one-word column that stretches on for near-infinity." No, I didn't mean to do this with the "Stuck at Lake Partway" piece, if you've tried to read it in its original incarnation. Hopefully it is more readable and printable now.

I've also been told that there is some weirdness on the Home page with the AOL browser. My not-particularly-charitable response is, "Anyone who chooses to use AOL, you get what you deserve." In the early days of AOL I had some horrible experiences trying to get rid of their software after I had installed a trial version. Sort of like RealPlayer now, except even worse. You think it's dead and gone, but it keeps popping up even after you thought a stake had been put through its sinister undeletable software heart.

Trusting truth

Here's a question: if we had a choice between knowing the absolute 100% truth about existence, or remaining with our current beliefs, what would we do? I posed this question during a talk I gave in Seattle last year, and I remember being met with a lot of quizzical faces (which isn't unusual for me when I speak, but I don't necessarily consider this to be a bad thing; if an audience is looking quizzical, at least they aren't asleep).

It's a good question, though. Most of us believe in God, somehow or other. And most of us believe in life after death, in some form or another. Each of these beliefs is comforting. But what if both are wrong? What if the cosmos lacks any sort of divinity behind it, and humans are just a bunch of material molecules hooked up in an intriguing fashion that gives us life for 70-80 years, or whatever, and then we die, and that's it. One life that is purely physical. There's no God who cares about us, and there's no meaning to all this living except what we each decide to ascribe to it.

Now, I don't really believe this is true--that life is meaningless, Godless, and a one-time deal. However, it could be, and that's a scary thought. So, I'm not sure what I would do if I was given the choice of knowing with complete certainty what the cosmos is all about, or remaining with my comfortable beliefs, which, even though I have doubts about them, still give me something to hang onto when the darkness starts to close in.
The concluding chapter of my book about Plotinus addresses this theme, particularly at the very end. In the course of writing "Return to the One," I had to think a lot about faith, and what it means to make a leap of faith. The chapter is called "Stuck at Lake Partway," and that sure describes my spiritual progress.

Along these lines, I'm looking forward to reading John Horgan's new book, "Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality." He wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education that addresses some of the themes in this book, including the limits of both faith and skepticism. Horgan says that at first he looked at Zen Buddhism as an efficient garbage-removal system that clears out all those beliefs and assumptions that prevent us from seeing reality as it is. But then, pondering how a box of garbage bags become garbage itself after the last box is used, Horgan realized that "every garbage-removal system generates garbage."

Truth and untruth. Faith and skepticism. Reality and unreality. There has got to be something more than these warring pairs of opposites. That must be what we're looking for. What is neither garbage, nor the garbage of not-garbage. The first one to find it, let everyone else know.

Whew! Made it by ten days

Man, what a relief, to be ahead of the curve by ten days. Yesterday's Living Section in the Oregonian had a fairly extensive story about blogs, a.k.a. web logs, which this here thing is. So if I hadn't decided to start HinesSight on January 2, I'd be behind the curve right now. Instead, I'm ten days ahead of the (Oregonian) curve. Of course, I'm years behind the weblog pioneers, so from that standpoint I'm way behind the curve. Well, I guess I'm right where I'm supposed to be, which is preparing to send out emails letting folks know about HinesSight.

The Oregonian article has some nice quotes from bloggers about why they blog. I can relate to most of them, based on my vast ten day experience, during which I basically have been blogging to myself (haven't gone blind yet, and it's so much fun). My own "why I blog" reason, so far, goes something like this: usually I share only parts of myself with people, figuring that if they saw the whole Me, they'd freak out in some fashion ("I didn't know Brian thought that...or did that...or believed in that; gosh, now I don't know what to think of him"). Well, a weblog along the lines of the title of the Oregonian piece--"The World According to Me"--gives you the whole shebang, the blogger from top to bottom, inside to out. OK, not completely, because total transparency is just too much for most people. I don't even want to know everything about me, so I can't expect others to want to.

Still, it is liberating to start breaking down the divisions between friends, and acquaintances, and co-workers, and neighbors, and relatives, and everyone else. Let it all hang out so the world can see it--that's blogging. It forces you to decide what is most important each day, or, at least, what pops up to the surface of your consciousness that you want to share. It makes you think about what you're experiencing, and how the various parts of your life fit together. So...we blog on.

Plotinus and coyote-control

It's nice to make connections between various aspects of your life. Here I am just now, editing my Plotinus (3rd century Greek philosopher) manuscript, and I come across a passage wonderfully apropos to our efforts to stop the killing of coyotes in our neighborhood. This bit is about Plotinus' attitude toward meat-eating, but I think he would be equally (if not more) aghast at the idea of killing an animal just because it is doing what comes naturally to it, and isn't harming any human. The quote in italics at the end is from Plotinus' Enneads, the collection of his writings.

Excerpt from “All is Alive” chapter of “Return to the One”:

“Plotinus refused to countenance the oft-heard rationale for meat-eating: ‘Animals are not like us.’ He considered this to be a shoddy bit of philosophizing. If humans are entitled to pursue happiness, one of the inalienable rights enshrined in the United States constitution, then why should other living things be denied their own right to seek well-being, insofar as it is possible? Humans differ from animals and plants in what we are capable of doing and experiencing, but all life is able to do and experience something. So one should be cautious about denying the good life to any form of life.”

Suppose we assume the good life and well-being to be one and the same.…For whether one considers the good life as consisting in satisfactory experience or accomplishing one’s proper work, in either case it will belong to the other living things as well as us.…Why will it not seem absurd of him to deny that other living things live well just because he does not think them important?…If pleasure is the end and the good life is determined by pleasure, it is absurd of anyone to deny the good life to other living things. [I-4-1]

Defragmentation, if it was only so easy...

Had to skip posting yesterday, due to a lengthy defragmenting process on my cranky computer. If you have never watched SystemWorks defragment a disk, consider adding this to your list of life's to-dos. Observing the process is strangely addicting. You start with a colorful map of your computer's amazingly fragmented hard drive, bits and pieces of files stuck here and there, all over the place. Then, through some mysterious process, the All-Knowing Optimizer goes about reshuffling those bits and pieces into a neat and tidy coherent system. Dot by dot, you watch (for hours, in my case) your computer change from being all split up, to getting it's hard drive act together.

If it was only so easy to do this with my own mind. Where's that Optimizer of human consciousness? I've been looking for it most of my life. Sometimes I feel as neatly ordered as my computer is at the moment, but other times I'm as scattered as my hard drive was yesterday morning. Anyway, now that my Windows XP system should only be crashing frequently, rather than often (isn't Microsoft great!), I feel confident enough to begin publicizing HinesSight more widely to family, friends, and acquaintances (which will be easy, since up to now only my sister knows it exists).

Brian's manuscript reading

click to enlarge
Over Christmas I did a complete reading of my 450 page "Return to the One" manuscript to a wonderfully attentive audience. No one budged from their chair, asked for a bathroom break, or even made a sound. Many thanks to my daughter, Celeste, for lining up most of these folks. She's known them since she was a little girl, and might even be able to still remember their names.

Stephen Hawking and me

Watching the "60 Minutes" piece about Stephen Hawking last Sunday, I came to realize that Stephen and I have a lot in common. To wit, I've read every page of "A Brief History of Time" and so, I must presume, has Stephen. The reporting was that millions and millions of copies of this book have been sold, but only a few dozen have actually been read (a slight exaggeration, perhaps, but not by much). "This is a book," said a minister with a sense of humor, "that you buy and put on the shelf, never to be looked at again, like the Bible."

I've also read Hawking's new book, "The Universe in a Nutshell," from cover to cover, so this must put me in even more exalted company. However, since evidently I like to read books that few other people read, the disturbing implication is that I like to write books that few other people would want to read. This isn't new news for me. It just reinforced my resolution to keep my writing as simple and straightforward as possible.

I've finished my initial attempt at rewriting my first book, "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder." I took out a lot of unnecessarily complex stuff, and toned down the preachiness and moralizing. Now, I'm making my way through the 450 pages of "Return to the One," my new book about Plotinus's spiritual/mystical teachings, trying to look at the book afresh through a typical reader's eyes.

It's pleasurable, in a painful sort of way, to take out a pen and cross out passages that I labored to write, and rewrite. This bears not a little resemblance to spring cleaning, when you peruse all the beloved crap that has accumulated in your house and summon up the guts to start throwing it in the garbage can. The first few tosses, you wonder "But maybe I should keep this..." Soon, though, it feels better to get rid of what you don't need, than to hang on to it. Same with writing.