A Book of Abstractions
Dear Stone,
Let me begin by thanking you for being an irreplacebale character within this book. You’re simple, with complicated thoughts. You’re one of ‘us’ but a cut above, for sharing your travels with the reader. You live in a linear world and speak of things that nudge barely linear convictions.
You are predictable but full of joy. You surprise me, but only at the right moments. You love the heroes, the villian and the guide equally and I don’t know why.
Your story is only half-told but still popular in most hospices. You cater to the young and old, but on days of distress you stick with the ailing. Your admirers have written from hospitals and nursing homes. Your beneficiaries have called from pediatric wards. I remember the charities we visited while went fund-a-raising together.
Your words are easy to re-visit. Your experiences make me wonder about easy problems that are difficult to resolve. Your relationship with time confuses me because it creates large loops and plays with distances so that none exist where they should!
If I could re-write you, I would have you sport wings. But then, you don’t need them. Maybe I could write you in a Covid-like lock down setting, and you could conjure an archive of solutions. The challenge would be to pair the exactly matched solution with its rightful recipient within that fictional world. I know you would fail, succeed, fail again and finally look at the problem upside down. They would be no permanent solution but worlds of new quests would become visible, all of them inter-twined and pulsing with life.
In the end, you would choose the route that was most authentic to you. The readers, as audience would fret over the perils that await you. But you would find peace because it was the best and truest path that you knew to take.
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In Stone & Shadow (2nd edition, 2017) is a workbook on recovery from long term health conditions. It was originally published in London in 2012 for members of hospices, charities and families of patients with end-of-life conditions.
The book is currently available on Amazon.in. Bulk orders available at inquiries@instoneandshadow.com.
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