The cover of Beyond Issue 14: Possible Worlds is a thing of beauty - a front and back wrap around painting by Jeremiah Ketner. I never get tired of looking at it. It makes me happy. His new Small and Round website is also a thing of beauty. Go. Look.
We called Issue 14 Possible Worlds and it became a collection on what hope could create. The voices were varied - from incredible photographers, illustrators, musicians and writers to the birds in our alley -everyone had something to say about seeing what was possible.
Contributing Editor Deegy continues the conversation. He lives in Vancouver, working at a crisis shelter for youth. He is a lover of community, music and art and can't kick the habit of cooking all things Jamie Oliver.
I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
And for an Everlasting Roof -
The Gambrels of the Sky -Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886)
I escaped to a greasy spoon diner after work yesterday, had some eggs, sausage and toast, and finally cracked open the book, The Impossible Will Take A Little While, this time to forge past the introduction. Diane Ackerman's essay A Slender Thread, around a call she fielded at a suicide hotline, really encouraged me. She writes:
As Emikle Sola once said, some mornings you first have to swallow your toad of disgust before you can get on with the day. We choose to live. But suicidal people have tunnel vision - no other choice seems possible. A counselor's job is to put windows and doors in that tunnel.
Her thoughts struck home, as our shelter encounters many suicidal young people every month. A few of my co-workers have even chased some clients from the door to the nearest bridge and pulled them to safety. Thankfully, like Ackerman, we do have the opportunity to punch some holes of light into these tunnels of despair, and on the odd occasion have a chance to hear that some of these youth, at some point, do move beyond their suicidal ideations with some help and counselling. Last night, one youth I had worked with months earlier, who still drops by for food and to talk from time to time, stopped by in a drunken stupor to thank me for helping him find a counsellor who he really connects with. It was a strange encounter, knowing he was still dealing with much pain but was a little farther along since he first came to us, when he was so eager to jump off the nearest bridge.
