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by C. Richard Bell (Author)
I woke up one morning sometime in 2001 and in between sleep and wakefulness I was thinking about what I had to get up and do. Actually, I was telling myself to get up and take care of the day's task. Later that evening I started working on a manuscript that began almost two years earlier. I decided quite spontaneously to revise the beginning of the first chapter with what I was saying to myself that morning. I basically started using the book to talk to myself. I went from writing in the first person to writing in dialogue. Not only did the way the book was written change but so did the substance, purpose, and intent. Over the next few days, months and years I would often find myself writing in the present, which can read throughout the book. I was not writing from hindsight; I was expressing thoughts for the first time as I wrote them.
The book is large in scope and without a particular genre. Thoughts and emotions don't happen in category or chronological order. Nor are the thoughts and emotions of a reader categorized in chronology. The book speaks about addiction and recovery yet is not a book about addiction and recovery. It speaks upon the contrast and ultimate uniting of one's intellectual facilities and those of will and desire. Yet it is not a philosophical book. It speaks upon the evolution from atheism to acknowledging divine reality, but it is not a theological book. It speaks of the vulnerability and struggles of a young black male seeking manhood, but it is not a book about the black "struggle." I detail the endeavor to become a better person and the inevitable pitfalls, but it is not a book about overcoming. It is, however, a book about the ever-changing reality of life, regardless of the fallacious idea that people stay the same.
Since the book was more than 25 years in the making and a large part of it was written in the present the book had no choice but to change as did the author. When I started writing in the Fall of 1998, I figured it would take about a year or two to finish the book. By the fall of the next year, I had the first 3 chapters completed and was working on the fourth. On November 23, 1999, two days before I was to turn 30, my mother committed suicide. From there I would dive deep into alcohol addiction, set myself on fire, and be a hospital ride away from death after being stabbed 6 times with a 7-inch boning knife.
Ultimately this book is about the inverted order of life that must be turned upside down and put into order. The order of love because anyone who loves desires to be loved. The order of wisdom because it is the means to practice love. And the order of service to others as the substance, form and purpose of life itself. I wrote about what I had lived while I was living it. Just prior to completing the manuscript I realized that writing a book helped me survive while circling the brink of death.
