A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
- T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land
Here are my Touchstones. Neither seem particularly comforting at first glance, but the first time I read either of them they touched something inside me that grabbed hold of them and wouldn�t let the words, at least the feel of the words, go until I had memorized and deciphered what it was they spoke to inside me. I could write all night (it is Sat. night; I spent all of today in a pool tournament) about what these things really say to me. Instead I�ll be rough and brief. They speak to me of the abyss which we call the mind. Every story ever penned be it �history� of fiction is a story of another world. As a person recounts an actual event, experience, etc; records a �history� somehow it becomes a story that can never be completely accurate; it becomes a story. Every time an author (yourself included) writes a tale of fancy, it becomes a story. Every story a reader looks and understands takes them to another world. �There are other worlds than these�. Meaning: There are still more stories out there to experience, find them, written or read, just find them.
The other, the T.S. Eliot poem, means scores of things to me, but why it really keeps bringing me back is that it shows how seemingly random thoughts can send shivers down your spine. It�s similar to �The Second Coming�; to the regular Joe it means little if anything, the words don�t form an easy story. What�s beautiful about this kind of poetry is that it acts like a mirror, reflecting different images and ideas to each person who has the courage to look into it, yet reflects the personage of the individual looking into it.
