Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

It’s January In The World

By Richard Steinberg

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself,” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our Bear In Mind is deep within the world right now, creating light and words.  And as the world is deeply in need of both light and words, it’s a pleasure to fill in for her today.  I’ll see you again on the 22nd.

Abraham Pascal was a writer.

True, he was never published.  He lived his life in a world without computers, so he never blogged.  He worked sixteen hours a day for most of his life, as a type setter in a print shop, so he never had the time to do the things required to begin and nurture a career as a writer.

But Abraham was a writer.

Every day, on his one meal break, he would take bits of pieces of paper and an ever smaller pencil, and write children’s stories.  Some nights when it was too cold to sleep, he’d light a candle and scribble to keep warm.  On his day and a half off each week, he would take these stories to a home for dying children.

Spending his time with them reading – sometimes acting out – his stories for the children’s delight.

Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen encountered Pascal one day.  After hearing his story, he asked him why he spent his off time in this pursuit instead of working additional jobs like most of those around him.  Surely he could use the money?

And Pascal agreed; then sighed and said:  “But then who would bring stories to the children?”

I am a writer.  A fictioneer prowling the high seas of our too complex world seeking light, bringing light when I can, fighting to preserve the light from those who would blot it from existence.

I am a fictioneer and I have been blessed, most of my life, to be so.  And whenever I could, I worked to continue bringing the light to those still struggling in the dark.

And there are so many in that horrific dark today.

I was talking about this with The Cool Autumn Breeze the other day.  About the new direction I’m taking this space this year.  About how the deeper I got into the guts of writing, the darker and more depressing it seemed to be.

And Breeze – extra bright light of hope and faith that she is – said to me:  “Then why don’t you start off the year with something more positive?”

Coming, as it did, moments after agreeing to fill in for Bear, when I was thinking of Abraham Pascal, and knowing the story of my life better now than I did, I suddenly knew what I must say today.

Time for us all to pay some dues to the cosmos.  To once again cough up the price of admission to our humanity.

Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, and the Equinox have passed.  We’re exhausted.  We’re depleted.  January is traditionally the weakest month of the year for charity contributions.  It’s the coldest, darkest, most depressing moment of the year for many.

But Glorious Glori taught me that at your darkest moments, that time when you despair the most of a future, of hope or belief, it’s time to give something back.  Time to reach out to others; and by benefiting them benefit yourself.

Books.

We need books.

Old books, slightly damaged books, books that have sat unopened on your shelves for months or years.  Books your children have outgrown.  Books you didn’t like and are now taking up space.  Books you loved and have somehow acquired three or four or more copies over the years.

A child that reads advances in intellectual and social skills at five times the rate of one that does not.  A teen that reads is sixty percent less likely to have a negative encounter with the police.  A grown man or woman that reads is able to maintain and grow their most basic skill sets, to strengthen their courage to face a harsh and bitter world.

To believe in the future.

They need books, dear gentle readers; and an opportunity to provide them has come to us.

Two extraordinary people have dedicated themselves to making the world we all inhabit a more livable one.  Tina & Steve are religious Pastors, true enough.  We do not share our form of worship, but more than share our belief in the possibilities of people.  They are hard working, moral, honest, remarkable people that bring great credit to their beliefs.

And a large part of what they believe in is that people deserve a chance.

Tina & Steve work hard and strong and forthrightly to help people who have fallen on hard times start again.  Obviously, there is nothing they don’t need for this.  But right now, they need for us to invest in humanity.

Books serve to bring a sense of normalcy to the lost.  They help move the despairing into a different place that doesn’t hurt or demand in pained moments.  Books help to sharpen and retain communication skills of those trying so desperately to start again.

Books, in their way, heal.

Will you, also, heal?

We need books.  As long as they are still readable and in serviceable condition we want them.  All genres, all types, all books.  Those that can’t find a home can be sold as used to raise funds for this and other good works.  We need books.

We need you.

Because this website has occasionally been the victim of automated sales pitchers who use hacking software, I will write out the contact e-mail, instead of putting it in proper form.  When you enter it in as an e-mail just write it out in the usual:  name@email.com form.  But please go to this extra trouble and e-mail Tina & Steve at:  Hesholy at Gmail dot com

Remember to type it in the correct way, not as it’s written here.

We live in a shrinking, more pained every day, world.  We don’t know our neighbors, turn away from ugliness, and insulate ourselves (out of proper need) from the loss and abandonment of our time.  It’s January in the world; a time of cold and dormancy and a waiting for the light and the warmth.

I choose to wait no longer.

I ask you to make that choice as well.

Like Abraham Pascal.

Late in his life, Abraham had difficulty walking, difficulty holding his pen.  He became housebound and catastrophically ill.  The last time Arthur Machen saw him – to deliver ink and paper – he asked him if all his work had made a difference, if all the years of sacrifice and giving had been worth it.

Barely able to speak, his arthritic fingers clutched the pen and wrote:  The future will know.

As our future will judge us.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not,” Dr. Seuss

One last word on this.

Heart.

It’s a big part of what separates writers from creative typists, wannabes from made-its; human beings from biological large brained hominids.

I am a professional writer.  I am a fictioneer bringing hope to the hopeless and afflicting the pain-bringers. Others here at Storytellers are other kinds of writers.  But we all, in our own ways, believe in some form of hope.

As I ask you all – my dear gentle friends – to believe as well.

In bringing hope.

I hope you will help people you may never meet, with a gift of books.  Simply, passionately, and for all time, help them to . . .

Believe!

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