Dark Cloud Country: Caution, Fiddling Façades & Drunken Composers

"And so, I guess, this is also a book about magical things—things that convey courtly melodies in the common vernacular."

This is the “Caution” or “Forward” of my newest book, Dark Cloud Country: The Four Relationships of Regeneration. You can buy the book here.

CAUTION: Fiddling Façades & Drunken Composers

I do not expect this book to be an easy read and neither should you. Life is not easy; grow up. Not up meaning out, but up meaning into. Into what? Grow up into a child-like wonder where curiosity triumphs and our modern and mechanistic worldview does not. Allow curiosity to fuel your attention and give over your time. This book requires you to do both. If this is not something you can give, so that we can grow together, please return it or give it to someone who can. Better yet, give a damn and see where it goes. You may surprise yourself.

Reader, the following collection is an honest attempt at saying something. It is a hard thing, you know, to say something. Talking is commonplace and familiar for most, but the uncommon among us arise when something is actually said. Not arise as though it is new from the soil beneath our bare feet but arise as the ascension of what we already know into that holy sanctuary, tinseled in the triumphal sublimity of holism—of all that is.

I write with one eye out the window. It is important to consider that this book was written by dictation and not the silent ponderings and careful typing of the solitary author. It is therefore best read out loud, for it was written out loud and its rhythms and rhymes are best understood when they are let out in the loud atmosphere of your senses. Read this like you would read poetry, for that is what it is, although it is masked behind the mystery of paragraphed prose. See the symbols and their words on the page, taste their succinct succulence in your mouth, hear their bright balladry within the undulating rhymes, and smell the normalcy all around you. This book was meant to be spoken.

This book is broken out into what I call the four relationships of regeneration and each section—or Relationship—is constructed by an introductory essay followed by poetry and lyrical prose that attempt an enigmatic elucidation of the key idea. The essays are thick and heavy, and—while my editor did her very best to help me simplify them—some concepts have obstinately demonstrated their non-extrudable natures.