Flight of the Jaguar | Update #1 | The manuscript is ready
These are part of the updates I sent supporters in 2019 as part of my kickstarter project, “Flight of the jaguar”. A collection of poems.
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Hi there,
I’ve been silent for the last two months ever since the campaign got funded and we reached the goal. I am so grateful for you. And I have to say you freaked me out. I mean. Thanks for believing in me and holy shit, “you believe in me!”. The last two months have been the march of the soul from surprise to doubt to fear to inhale and exhale, up through the nostril and down to the belly, all the way to a slam dunk of the heart and a glimpse of what glory, in its simple, humble, boring reality can feel like. The manuscript is ready.
I’m starting to speak to authors who have self-published and am weighing options to get something out and ready by end of March. I’m also making the illustrations myself. You’ll find some of them (subject to change), along with the name of the chapters, attached. This timeline might slip given that it’s my first time publishing a book by myself and the unknowns are unknown. If you know anything about publishing a beautiful book, reach out! That’s all you need to know if you want the book. If you want to know how the book you’ll read was produced in the last two months, read on.
“Flight of the Jaguar” was written in Paris. It won’t be an anthology of the poems you’ve read on social media, rather a thematic collection that stitches several of the poems you’ve come across. This book has tested me like few things before it. I’ve written poems about writing poems as I was writing poems! It was a heated dance at times. Sometimes it felt like giving birth for a full day, others like dealing with an adolescent, others like a troubled couple where both spouses gave each other the silent treatment for days in a row. Here’s the thing. I “know” the poem is there. Like a partner who’s always been. It just doesn’t want to talk to me. Now, it might seem surprising to think the poem is “there”. Some think poems come from the void. They don’t. They’re always there. Like a fruit made ripe by thoughts and feelings thought and felt by thousands of past generations. It’s right “there”.
And yet I can’t just reach and take it. Because it’s me. Precisely because it’s *me*. It is a very personal insult. There’s no one else but me in this duo. And I am being ignored. But for a reason. I’m not ready. At least at 1pm I’m not and so I have to go for a walk and read an entire book about Francis Bacon and eat then nap for 3 hours then eat again, then watch some sexy videos, then feel depressed, then meditate for two hours, then watch a manga series for 4 hours. And then, for no reason whatsoever, the poem is right there, sitting on the couch saying where have you been?. Are you kidding me, I’ve been waiting for you! You’ve been waiting for me? I’ve been right here, what took you so long? and I shake my head and say can we get to work already?. And then it flows. Then and there, it drips like honey. And lord what a feeling.
It’s the most blissful moment you’ve had in your life. It’s the spark you see in new parents’ eyes. It’s the light in a mother’s smile looking at her children speaking up for themselves, though it’s felt like torture for years to get there. It’s the deep exhale of a couple followed by a laugh, after running out of the cab, past security to get to their flight seat on time. And I cry. Because I’ve already forgiven the little bastard’s insults and nags and attitude. I love the little shit.
I learned some things from this problematic relationship. I learned that form is to function, what context is to content, what medium is to the message and what stretching is to dancing. It is the way you prep the vessel that will channel the music. It is what sketching is to drawing, the skeleton that will hold the flesh and muscles. It is the elbow’s room the sculptor budgets for when diving into a sculpture. The storyboard for a movie. The soul that will hold the poem. Come little poem come.
Thank you ❤
