Out Where The Big Waves Are
A Different Kind Of Blog
This is a blog to take you where you haven’t been before. It selects prominent people and introduces (or re-introduces) them through a freshly written article on each. Then, it fastens these to larger human issues, thereby giving to the dedicated reader — who knows how to get one’s own personal experiencing involved– an opportunity to “let go all lines,” shove off from shore, and head for the open seas . . . out where the big waves are.
Here is how it begins
This man is world-famous. You may know a lot about him, only a little, or nothing at all.
But once you discover how he viewed life and see the way he lived his own, I doubt you will ever forget him. Read but a few of his paragraphs and you will see why. And if you can’t tell this that soon, then he’s not a writer meant for you — at least not until you’ve lived a little more.
Then the blog is launched with its first article, “The Arresting Life & Writing Of Nikos Kazantzakis (with a review of Report to Greco).” Its second, a very short one, recounts a surprising event that took place in Switzerland on a sunny afternoon towards the end of summer in 1988. It came about through an unexpected invitation from Eleni Kazantzakis, Nikos’s wife and widow, to come meet and visit her in her apartment home on 32 Avenue William Favre in Geneva.
That spontaneous and gracious event, still vividly alive in memory after twenty-five years, stretched through the remainder of that afternoon into the early evening . . . and ushered in the altogether unanticipated second sunrise of my soul.
With these two articles as a springboard, the blog then dives headlong into Eleni’s classic NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS: A Biography Based On His Letters (published by Simon & Schuster in 1968) — introducing the world to Nikos’s life and the rare type of writing that never stopped issuing from his source. Throughout her book, the spotlight remains locked on Nikos (because Eleni deliberately kept it so, focusing her writing where she also focused her life); and yet, it manifestly shows her traces as well, because for the thirty-three years they spent together as man and wife, the life of either one could never be fully told nor adequately understood without also making constant and intimate references to the other.
Finally, to complete this snapshot of how the blog begins, the next figure enters. It is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, as drawn in Stacy Schiff‘s SAINT-EXUPÉRY: A Biography . . . an extraordinary piece of writing that first confronts and then creatively handles one sizable biographical challenge after another. Her book appeared in 1994, treating the famous poet-aviator and world-renowned author of The Little Prince, whose Lockheed Lightning P-38 disappeared 1n the Mediterranean Sea towards the end of World War II.
From this point on in the blog, one figure after another steps forth, all seen as unique people holding those riddles and clues that point to the individual life there within. A little sensible digging should yield worthwhile results, or so it seems.
The topic of each blog article clearly shows in its title, as the nexus tying the life of the people selected to the books read and reviewed here about them. The next posted article to follow these is : “The Lingering Effects Left By The Lives of Those Who Vanish.” It draws from the lives of both Amelia Earhart and Saint-Exupéry.
It picks up three biographies on Amelia Earhart (The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell, Susan Butler’s East To The Dawn, and Amelia Earhart by Kathleen C. Winters), combining these with three on Saint-Exupéry (Schiff’s book already mentioned, The Tale of the Rose, by Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, and Luc Estang’s Saint-Exupéry), allowing all six to be brought together and seen in light of a single unifying subject.
By tying these varied works to the same subject, the blog unites them in the same issue, involving the experience of selected prominent figures with that of the readers as well, commencing an ever-deepening exploration into the meanings by which people come to live.
And there you have it — why this blog is designed the way it is, how its parts fit together, and the underlying occasion it seeks to set before its readers.
If questions arise at any point, whether large or small, please don’t hesitate to make them known. Comments from people genuinely seeking are always welcome. Bon voyage!
— G.R.
Out Where The Big Waves Are 