Where’d It All Begin?

Some things are easier said than done. One of those things is finding the earliest beginnings of a book. Fiction or non fiction, it doesn’t matter. Some of us have pedigrees that go back centuries, even millenia. I, for instance, could claim, if I wanted to, philosophical strands of dna that go back four thousand years to the subcontinent of  India where they made some nifty seals with yoga poses on them.

That would be similar to you claiming to be a direct descendant of Adam and Eve, or Fred and Wilma Flintstone or even that orphan of rocky Africa, Lucy. Technically, you are probably related, but there’s a lot of human drama between Pebbles and the glint in your poppa’s eye that initiated the fireworks that resulted in you having a body to wander around in.

Similarly, there’s a lot of philosophical drama between those old seals and the glint in Jinjer’s eye. The comparison isn’t very sturdy, because before there could be a glint in Jinjer’s eye, I already had to have a certain bookly maturity and force of personality in my own right long, long before she sat down to put pen to paper (or fingers to computer keys).

The originating glint, so to speak, that led to me was actually more like “a disturbance in the Force” or a ripple in the underlying substance of the universe. That originating glint was actually in a servant girl’s eye as she labored in the employ of a follower of the charlatan-cum-yogi called the Great Oom in the late 19th (or early 20th) Century.