Deep in Your Soul by Michael McFadden

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Q: What message is yearning inside you? What is something you know deep in your soul? Don’t look for someone else to describe it. You do it. Write it down. Write it as a poem, a sentence or even just a string of words. Just make sure you get it to paper.

A: All I know is since I was a child I have felt there is something very specific I am supposed to accomplish, something noteworthy, of importance. It drives a compulsion to read, to buy books on specific topics, to take college courses, not for the degree, but for the knowledge. I keep turning rocks over and digging in the dirt thinking any moment the epiphany will happen. But maybe that's the problem, maybe it's not an exuberant, spotlight bright AHA, maybe it will only be a quiet, self satisfied whisper, a star lit glow. Maybe it grows the way nature does, slow and almost imperceptible.

I just want to hear it, recognize it for its importance and focus on it with intense clarity of purpose. I want to know what exactly IT is or is IT a multitude of things, half filled wishes? I believed, for the last few years, it was writing about place, about native plants, protecting the Niagara River Gorge Rim and Gorge. Maybe it still is and I'm just weary of the political haranguing.

The constants or assets in my life are: creativity, (I overflow with with productive, implementable ideas and I can make great connective leaps); intelligence (I learn with ease in an academic setting but am a preferred autodidact); books I own thousands - nonfiction mostly, literary fiction for pleasure--I am immersed when reading; gardening; love of nature, wildlife and family.

Creative pursuits: writing, knowledge and research, cooking, gardening with natives for wildlife, bird watching and feeding, creating a home-based, place of refuge inside and out, creating art - not fine art, but artful, decorative things.

What I want: clarity of purpose so precise it can never be questioned, deep intuitive knowledge, and eloquence. Most of all I want eloquence.