And I was only cleaning mushrooms.

I stopped cleaning mushrooms to come here and tell you something, dear reader. There was mushroom dirt under my nails, the small, wet cloth in the hand that was cleaning the mushrooms, when a thought so mighty, so primal passed over the sky of my mind that I had to stop. I had to come to you and try to tell you what that thought sounded like, felt like.

I know I am not the first writer to feel this, nor will I be the last. I have heard artists, too, speak of this aching, primordial feeling, large enough to knock a seeker off their path; to stop the writer from writing and the painter from painting. Comparison to others can have the same effect, though the root of that particular pain is what flashed before me tonight.

From the editor’s chair this morning, I feel almost too self-conscious to come clean with you, dear reader, though that would not only invalidate the entire theme this post will take, but the very core reason why I started this blog in the first place.

But first, a bit of context.

It will make sense that before the mushrooms, I was editing my new poetry book. The proof version arrived in the mail earlier this week and I can’t help myself from scribbling notes right there on the pages—“move this paragraph down,” “change murmur to whisper,” and assigning titles to poems where titles were absent. In reading back over this work again, I was reminded of how good poetry (even some of my own poetry, at times) makes this staggering fact come forward that to be a human on this earth with such a beating heart and an uncharted brain and a limitless Soul makes me feel so much and yearn for so much and see so much, that I want to say so much and share so much.

Maybe it’s Resistance, whispering in my ear, but going back over those poems struck some panic into my heart. Not good enough, the little voice says. Not fooling anyone.

And though I was only cleaning mushrooms over the sink, it suddenly felt like I could see the Milky Way across 10 dimensions--like my heart opened itself to become a gateway to another place. And though it lasted for only a moment, I held that feeling in the palm of my hand, observing it with every sense and from every angle while all time stopped for me to breathe that miracle into my spirit—and yet I was grasping for something that I couldn't reach, like an inability to give voice to that experience; lacking the words, the skill, the breadth to make really, really good art.

I should write a letter to Ringo Starr one day, thanking him for an interview he gave a while back on the radio which I was so blessed to have chanced to hear.

He said that in the early career of the Beatles, all they cared about was making music together. They weren’t overly concerned, he claimed, with whether or not that music was perfect—they were a new band, and perfection wasn’t the point. All that mattered was just making music because the ideas were coming in abundance. To sit and stew on one record or one album would have stopped the flow of expression. “We got better,” he said. “Our songs became progressively more complicated. But in the beginning we didn’t care about that.”

And though I realize that those 4 guys together created a kind of kismet genius-without-equal across the rock ’n roll pantheon, the point he made really stuck with me.

This is my first volume of poems.

If you break down that very simple sentence, there is much to learn here, and to be grateful for. (Stick with me here.)

This is…It exists! It is. And that counts for a lot.

…my…This is something I created. Hours of my blood, sweat, and tears informed these works. My voice was honed and shaped by the experiences which later became subjects for me.

…first…And it’s the first!! Well done for hitting “print”.

…volume of poems. It’s not the end-all, be-all of my professional catalog, it’s merely one volume of some words that I strung together, then identified as poetry.

You may have caught on by now that many of these blog posts exist to banish that disparaging voice in my head that tries to break me down and stop my progress from achieving great things. Five days a week I hit the “Publish” button with no other hope that the message may strike a chord with you, too.

Happy Monday.