Max Reif's Blog - Posts Tagged "max-reif"

This has been a big week. Two projects on which I've labored for years have resulted in the publication of a book of short stories title Toward an Interior Sun" and a CD of songs called The Wake-Up Man, within a few days of one another.

Now what, I ask, chuckling? Time will tell. But I want to say a few words about the process that led to this book, in particular, because I think the story is kind of instructive.

All my spiritual understanding from Meher Baba and other great sages can be summarized in one sentence: "Do your best and leave the results to God."

But that motto has not kept me from huge and sometimes prolonged feelings of discouragement. As a writer, one of my models has been Hermann Hesse, a bright light who shone in the darkness of the first half of the 20th century, and who dramatized many of his own crises and subsequent breakthroughs as enduring fictional narratives.

Hesse's little books like Journey to the East, Siddhartha, and Demian are dazzling jewels, glimpses of possible worlds that most prose writers of the time seemed to not even suspect. Hesse's work went hand in hand with another mentor of mine, Carl Jung, and with Meher Baba, whom I regard as a Master of masters.

And so, in my mid-twenties, emerging from a period of travail, as do many of Hesse's characters, into the bright mystical light of my own spiritual honeymoon, I felt inspired, and released that inspiration in poetry, prose, painting and music. I had no training in music, except for piano lessons that I was forced to take as a kid, and a few guitar chords. But a song "came out of me," and then another one—almost like a woman giving birth twice without even knowing she was pregnant! I truly learned, during these heady times that, as Avatar Jesus said, "all things are possible!"

I read a biography of Hesse and found that publishers began discovering him in his twenties. Where were mine? I scanned the horizon...none on their way. Here and there, a poem published, a short piece in a Meher Baba journal. That was all.

I kept on, because no one who is made to write can suppress the need to do so.
Around five years ago I received an email from a lady named Jane Olivier. She had seen a few poems of mine on a website at which I had once been active, and asked whether The Mindful Word, the online journal she published with her "collective," might print a few of them.

Naturally, I said yes. Not long after, I tentatively wondered whether they might be able to use a story I'd written; then a book review; then a piece of humor about a young man sitting next to me at Starbucks who thought I was "Too Old for Facebook!""

All in all, I now have more than seventy pieces on my Author Page at The Mindful Word. Among them are the 11 short stories, mostly taken from my own experiences—as was much "fiction" by novelists like Thomas Wolfe and Henry Miller—which became Toward an Interior Sun. This, by the way, is the first original book ever published by TMW, which next month will be releasing two more, picture book stories written by my friend Kathy Roberts.

So, the big eagle of a full-blown book grew from the little sparrow of an email request for a couple of poems. That is the manner in which many of spiritual gifts have entered my life. You, too, may have some "little thing" that has already arrived in your world, which will eventually turn out to be a "big thing" in the vast tapestry of life.

"

Naturally, I was thrilled a week or so ago, when the UPS guy came to the front door with the parcel that I knew was the first copy I would ever set eyes on of my new book. The book had been published a couple days before by The Mindful Word. It's an on-demand book, as many are these days. I wanted to hold it right away, as any dad would his new "baby," and so rather than wait to receive some promised copies from the publisher, I had ordered a copy immediately.

I ripped open the envelope, the fumbling way most of us do that. As it tore, I could see parts of the cover art. Finally, I saw all of it. I pulled the book out, put the envelope "afterbirth" aside, and cradled "Toward an Interior Sun."

But something was not right! The book was TOO BIG! We had formatted it at 6" by 9," one of the usual sizes for a paperback. Due to some complication, it had emerged from the printer at 7" by 10"! I don't want to carry the "baby" analogy too far; it's only a book. But I panicked! The precious object did not FEEL right in my hands!

This experience was a deep lesson of some kind. What is "a book?" We all have some kind of platonic idea of that. A book is some sort of content between covers...at least a hard-copy print book is.

But the heady feeling I expected, the "I've finally gotten a book published by people who believed in it enough to midwife it!" (as opposed to a self-published book) did not come! It felt more like a cookbook, size-wise. Almost, but not quite, a coffee-table book. I couldn't place what it really was!

It seems we have conventions for almost everything in life, though we may seldom be aware of them until they are somehow violated. Was I demented? Was I an ingrate? I went to our bookshelves and got out several paperbacks, even a hardback or two. None were that big! There were several different standard sizes, it appeared, but not 7 x 10, at least for books of short stories or novels!

I had to write the publisher at The Mindful Word, "It's too big! It doesn't feel like a real book!"

At first he wrote back, "Now that it's out, we should stay with it." The content, after all, was fine.

But I replied once more, all but adamant, and the next note back to us was a request for my wife Barbara - who did the formatting - to trim the file that was used for publication back to 6x9. It was not clear how the enlargement had come about in the first place. All that mattered now, though, was the fix.

Within a day the book had been withdrawn, except for the Kindle version. Now the new version's back up on Amazon. I received a copy yesterday. No question: it DOES feel like a real book!
***
There was one other little thing to repair. I found a reference in the first story, about my family's drive through the American South to Miami when I was 11, to the fact that on our travels along state highways we only saw a few examples of the "Bill Crow laws" of that era. "BILL CROW LAWS?" I was horrified! People would think me completely insensitive, ignorant, or both! How had this happened?

As Barbara and I discussed it, I remembered finally that I had used "find and replace" on the name of a character in another story whose real name, Jim, I had wanted to fictionalize. I'm aware now that "find and replace" is notorious for having such unintended consequences.

Fortunately, we were able to fix that error, too, in the shiny new edition that is now rolling off the presses!

learn more about "Toward an Interior Sun" and place an order

I'm starting to get feedback from people who "have read my book, Toward an Interior Sun: Awakening by a Master and the Difficult Road Toward Discipleship. Last night we were at a dinner party and a friend came up and whispered to me that she had just finished it. And she had some kind words for it.

I felt...well, thrilled.

I also felt terrified, in a certain way. I realized anew how utterly intimate is the bond between author and reader.

MEETING IN THE PAGES

Years ago I had my seminal experience in this recognition. I had just finished putting together a chapbook of poems. I'll let a passage from an essay written a few years ago tell the story.

***

I rode home on the bus cradling fifty copies of my baby in my lap. The first copies had gold covers. They felt like pure gold. I brought the books back to the office (a little room I'd rented in an activist-coop building for $35 a month). The late November evening was cold, windy, and delicious. Deep snow lay on the ground. As I entered the building, a man about my age was walking in the hall.

“What have you got there?” he asked.

“A book of poetry I just finished writing,” I said proudly, holding up my beautiful cover.

“Wow,” he said. “May I read it? “

“Sure, I told him. “Here, you can have a copy.”

“That’s so kind of you,” he said. “Will you autograph it?”

Soon I was walking toward my own little space on the second floor, eager to make a cup of tea and go over the poems in the book one more time. I pulled my key chain from my pocket. It was heavy with keys to several churches I opened each week for self-help meetings. Closing the door behind me and putting the books down on the desk, I suddenly felt completely naked, as if my entire psyche was being x-rayed.

What’s going on, I wondered? As far as I knew, I was completely alone, and had been filled with nothing but expansive feelings.

Then I knew. The young man downstairs had opened his book and was reading. He was reading my soul. That was what poetry was: the book of one’s soul, shared.

[from Becoming a Poetin The Mindful Word, 2012]

***

One of the things that surprised me that day was that I felt I had only gone a little ways under the surface in that little book. There was much, much more to say.

TRUTH TO A HIGHER POWER

The eleven stories in Toward An Interior Sun are all about life-changing events. They are by no means "spiritual boy-scout tales." They are rather the truth of my life, insofar as I'm able to share it.

Much of this truth is not pretty. Much of it is about failure, and getting up again, and being grateful to be in one piece in my sixties. But what choice does one have, attempting to write with integrity? Either one tells the actual truth, or one remains silent.

Several people had read all the stories in The Mindful Word, over the several-year period during which they were written and published. Now, readers get them all between two covers, to absorb in a week or two.

The events dramatized in the stories took place over the span of five or six decades, so I've had quite awhile to assimilate their content. I realized last night, as my friend mentioned her news, that I have absolutely no idea what it would be like to read them so quickly!

A SACRED BOND

All I do know is that the reader/author bond is indeed deep and intimate. It is one of the many miracles of human life. An author who has labored long and hard to produce something worthwhile is naturally bowed in gratitude that the universe is what it is: a place where we each create gifts made from our precious energy, substance, and exploration, and share them with one another.


Click on the BUY link on this page, to purchase Toward an Interior Sun