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I want to give you a smile. :) And a laugh, and a moment of inner opening that takes you by surprise -- like getting something you didn't know you needed, and absolutely did not know to ask for.

I want to remind you of your own freedom. I want to remind you (mostly for my sake) that you owe me and my work nothing, and that I would actually prefer for you to put the book down and never think of me again if any of your attention feels artificial, the product of a choice you don't really believe in.

I want to love you. :) And I do, I promise you that. I'm one of those people who has earnestly loved everyone they've ever met.

I want to seat us as peers at the same sidewalk cafe table, sitting at 90 degrees from each other, our gazes out into the world intersecting as we watch it all go by. I want to learn what you see. I want to know if you would like to see what I see -- please ask! I'm not wired to tap you for attention. I am wired to remain here, in rapt wonder, until someone notices the look in my eyes and they ask me what I see.

Peers. I just described us, above, as peers. I want you to understand that I am your peer. I am, I promise you that. I'm one of those people who has never felt above anyone they've ever met -- and I am now one of those people who has learned that they are not below anyone, either.

If you're willing, I want to draw you a map of the way I exist. Not for you to follow yourself, particularly. More so because I think it is time for my map to be shared. I want you to know how strange it is for me to feel that! And it's not that I want to make the world in my image: rather, I want to help y'all see more of the whole image that exists -- the image of All That Is.

I want to remind you:

• In the image of All, you are a beautiful, beautiful detail.

• In the image of All, your presence irrevocably improves the whole.

• In the image of All, you are under no expectations whatsoever, and held to no standard at all.

• To the image of All, you are free to add whatever you want.

• To the image of All, you are free to add as little and as much as you want.

As you consider all of this, as you consider the entirety of All and your presence in it and what you may add, I want you to know that you are free to take as long as you need. You are also free to forget the whole thing. Handle this however you wish. You can consider "however you wish" carefully, or not at all. Proceed impulsively or thoughtfully or gratefully or hatefully or whatever is before you. I want you to know that the All I see is stunningly vivid, clever, surprising, soothing, healing, and it includes you, in all your forms and feelings. You are important, and you are free. I want you to know that I am awash in the sensation of absolute grateful priviledge -- tears in my eyes as I write this, on a sidewalk cafe table -- to walk a world that bears your name.

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I want to write a book, I think. I want to remember that in this I am under no expectations whatsoever, held to no standard at all. I want to remember that I am free to take as long as I need, and that I am free to forget the whole thing. I want to remember that the total image of All is beautiful with me in it as I am, without any preparation or calculation or deliberate presentation on my part, and including any contradiction or omission or retraction or addition I may realize along the way.

I want to hold my thoughts of this (the book thing, specifically) out in the open, freely in the daylight, without feeling like those thoughts must be unseen and secret in order to be true or safe or fecund. I want to remember that this world is better and greater for my expression as it is -- that I may edit my expression if there is joy in the editing, but that I need not account for everything and everyone before I let my expression be seen and heard.

A small point of context: my working memory is relatively (and measurably) restricted, and I am a details-first perceiver. This means that I may (and usually do) fall in love with every tree I see, and I may (and usually do) delight at the way one family of trees gives way to another as I walk on -- BUT all of those details may (and usually do) slip out of my mind, and I may (and usually do) miss the image of the whole. This is an elaborate way of saying that I frequently miss the forest for the trees.

This is part of why I want to make a map. I know that the way I see is special -- and while I am having the best time, I am curious: what is above what I see? If I map all of the trails that I know, and if I label all the trees I've met, and if I set all of that down on paper and if I step up and step back and look at the whole image, what will I see? If I am given an opportunity to transcend my usual level of perception, what will I see?

As of this moment, the thing I feel forming seems to be a book. I may absolutely discover that it is something different -- or that it is several somethings, or nothing at all. (One more for that list above: the image of All has layers, and if you would like to tuck your details into a hidden layer that only some (or only you) can see, you may.)

I love the idea of it being a book. :) To "love the idea" -- this is how I've learned to think of the things I think I want. I just hold the warm sensation of the concept, without a thought for the how or the why or the when. I leave aside the aspects of wanting that make me anxious or afraid, and I pull up the idea that all things and times exist (in the multiversal sense), and I just appreciate the glimpse I'm having of some moment on some timeline in which my book exists. Maybe it'll be on this timeline. I want to find out. :)

-Isaac