Prologue to a manifesto of sorts

Last week, I posted a fragment of the novella I've been fretting and sweating over to get it polished up and pretty. This is another fragment of it -- the first fragment, actually, that lays out what the book is truly about. The plot has to do with a hippie lady and her artsy friends and cooperation and chaos and community, but what it's actually about is a kind of global spiritual shift. It's a shift I believe has been coming, and I'm not alone in believing that it's happening right now. And so I give you what appears to be a socialist-artistic manifesto that flowed through me to give me the framework for the short book, "Enlightenment: The Messy Birth of a New World."

The San Marcos River, the centerpiece and source of life in the town where our story begins

Creation is a nonstop process. Just because our galaxy is flying around in space, just because the Sun and all the planets have formed and seem to be moving as they should, it doesn't mean this is all there is. Water flows in riverbeds and oceans, plants grow and flower and spread, animals frolic and feed. Humans move vast distances and wear business suits and have developed the technology to buy and sell portions of the planet with the touch of a button. Yet there is much farther to go.

On our little round piece of the universe, there are certain places where it seems as though the power to make and remake comes up through the earth in eruptions, like a geyser. And the only vessels around to receive that power are the humans in the vicinity. Sometimes the ambient creative energy is powerful enough to override basic human behaviors -- the desire for wealth, the tendency to rush and worry. The people who are drawn to, or born to, these plumes of creativity and choose to remain open to the power and let it move through them believe that everything else will fall into place. They let the energy carry them. A group of people who share this belief will take care of each other, whether through emotional encouragement or help in providing the necessities of life, because they understand that they are all in it together -- atoms drawn together into molecules and joined in a perfect mass of living creation.

San Marcos, a town in the middle of Texas that people have heard of but don't really know, is one of the places where this energy is strong. The power rises from the ground with the water that feeds the local river, freshly sprung from a vast underground source. It's as if the Demiurge has a compulsion to continue expressing itself with the minds, hearts, hands and voices of anyone nearby who will open up to it.

This isn't to say that everyone in the town spends every waking moment philosophizing, writing, singing, dancing, making soap or knitting hats, though more of that goes on here than in a lot of places. People have day jobs. Some are lucky enough to get paid for being vessels for the creative energy. Others, out of necessity, may hold jobs that have nothing to do with their creative purpose but allow them to pursue their passions with financial and/or moral support. Others may not have what is typically considered an artistic bent but have found time and energy to serve their muses. Some feel their children and families are their highest purpose and are stay-at-home parents. Some really love talking to people and go into retail or customer service. Some really love clothing or beverages or food and have been able to find work that lets them be surrounded by those things all day. Still others -- a handful here, but from what I understand they're the dominant species elsewhere -- have closed themselves off to their purpose and do what they do out of greed or ambition, ignoring the urge to submit to the creative energy and dismissing the importance of that urge in others.

This is where the story of the Great Breakdown begins -- this is where a new wave of creation and compassion crashes down over the useless systems that only benefit a handful of people who have shut themselves away from the universe's growth process. The cataclysm begins in a small town at the foot of the Texas Hill Country known mostly to outsiders for its outlet malls and university football team, even though music always fills the air and the Creator is busy feeling and shaping the world with the people's hands.