Beauty Mountain

This is from Banu over at NC Arts.
From The Wall Street Journal
June 3, 2010
‘Vanity’ Press Goes Digital
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER And JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG

Writer Karen McQuestion spent nearly a decade trying without success to persuade a New York publisher to print one of her books. In July, the 49-year-old mother of three decided to publish it herself, online.

Eleven months later, Ms. McQuestion has sold 36,000 e-books through Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle e-bookstore and has a film option with a Hollywood producer. In August, Amazon will publish a paperback version of her first novel, “A Scattered Life,” about a friendship triangle among three women in small-town Wisconsin.

Ms. McQuestion is at the leading edge of a technological disruption that’s loosening traditional publishers’ grip on the book market—and giving new power to technology companies like Amazon to shape which books and authors succeed.

Much as blogs have bitten into the news business and YouTube has challenged television, digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that’s threatening the traditional industry. Once derided as “vanity” titles by the publishing establishment, self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment.

“If you are an author and you want to reach a lot of readers, up until recently you were smart to sell your book to a traditional publisher, because they controlled the printing press and distribution. That is starting to change now,” says Mark Coker, founder of Silicon Valley start-up Smashwords Inc., which offers an e-book publishing and distribution service.

Fueling the shift is the growing popularity of electronic books, which few people were willing to read even three years ago. Apple Inc.’s
iPad and e-reading devices such as Amazon’s Kindle have made buying and reading digital books easy. U.S. book sales fell 1.8% last year to $23.9 billion, but e-book sales tripled to $313 million, according to the Association of American Publishers. E-book sales could reach as high as 20% to 25% of the total book market by 2012, according to Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant, up from an estimated 5% to 10% today.

To continue reading:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704912004575253132121412028.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

On my way home today, I saw a box turtle stuck in the middle of the road. I stopped and a truck was coming, and I pointed to it, and it was just able to avoid it. Then, I ran over and moved it to the side of the road, and lo and behold there was another box turtle there craning its neck, looking for it. I put them next to each other. They had the most exquisite patterns, and so different like snowflakes. I wish I had my camera. But then I found a four leaf clover :)
I hope they both have a long, happy life.

The soft brush of the robes that swirled at his ankles as they passed over me was rapture. He bent down close, and I offered no resistance. Bare feet and rough hands touched me deeply, digging, reaching into me. I am crushed, freed, by the gentle fingers. Raising me to meet his lips, he tastes my depths.

I remember little before the first roots snaked their way through me. My dark, unyielding mass fractured until I became open and alive. When the roots moved through me, I was forever changed. As the vines met the sun, the roots climbed deeper still, reaching for the dark, wet layers of time, breathing in new life.

Now I connect with other masses, minerals. Large and small beasts feed me, burrowing into me, making me their home, and then, dying into me. My rapture deepens. Seasons bring warm sun, cool moon, powerful winds, exquisite rains. Fruit blooms, ripens. Falling from the vine it returns to me, tasting like me, like every part of me. The seed alone is left to create anew. Create, ripen, harvest, rest, and again. I am complete.

The monks come no more. There are no swirling robes to caress me, but hard, fast metal. No fingers reach into me, touching me, tasting me. Now, many hard boots walk over me, many fast hands pick the fruit.

And yet I wait for the warm caress of soft robes, gentle hands, bare feet.

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.
Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road–
Only wakes upon the sea.
-Antonio Machado

POLITICO 44: Familiar patron.

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.

You have become a sort of grave

containing much that was

and is no more in time, beloved

then, now, and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree

standing over a grave.

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young, to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

                                        –from A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry

My story begins with a crash. Or maybe a year of crashes that culminated in the biggie. Two hundred feet down a ravine, way, way out in the woods, on a big beast of a machine, of all things. Not anything I’d typically be found on. But that afternoon I was. Two days after Thanksgiving, and one day after our 10^th anniversary. With a nine-year-old on the back. Who was able to jump off at the very beginning of the fall. And I cannot express my gratitude to the universe for that. I ended up broken, at the bottom of the hill, requiring Frank & Heather, along with a bunch of emts to evacuate me with ropes and pulleys, then a 6-wheeler to get back out the trail, to an ambulance and then a helicopter to be air lifted to the hospital.

The last month has found me healing. Four smashed ribs, crushed arm and leg, and a weird fear of being on the edge. Funny it all happened at the holidays. Right after an uneventful Thanksgiving. And the accident brought family I had not spend an extended amount of time with in years. Such a time of reflection, rest, reading, writing. In some ways, what a gift. But, I want to heal. To begin to play and move again. Tomorrow I start physical therapy.

So… this is where my story begins. And a record of my journey….