Dear Reviewer

Dear Reviewer   (and all new readers),

 

as you start reading en.light.en.ment, you'll soon see how personal my book is; once I was to be murdered, then I nearly drowned and another time I was going broke.

en.light.en.ment is a 'Living Book'; due to the nature of my writings my essays are developed on an ongoing basis ... indeed, I read, correct & update my book - and my website / blog - daily. I say for good reason in my impressum: 

“I work on them day & night, 

in fact, all but every minute of every day & every night.” 

A key to my writings is my essay ALONE in which I talk about contemplation. People ask, "where do you get all this stuff from?" The intro on my website says:

"This is what I do, I read, watch & listen ... then think ... then write."

As for thinking ... all but every minute of every day & every night; thus my book is very topical and revised frequently. A revision may reflect a current affair ... like the essay  GUNS  which had the 2017 Las Vegas shooting included. Some essays deal with popular sciences, i.e.  FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE  which are updated regularly too.

Furthermore, when I read a book "The Happiness Advantage" I promptly added a relevant paragraph at the bottom of my essay  HAPPINESS.

 

You probably will agree that I have created a devilish problem for myself when I decided - for good or for bad - on that unusual format for my essays and the layout of my book.

 

Every page is hand-made in MS Word ... no two pages are the same in layout and I refer to my at times somewhat odd language as German/Australian/English. 

 

While this language and book-format are an expression of myself - the way I function, the way I work (in my life-long working career I was a still life photographer, each  photo  is hand-made) - it does not so much restrict me ... as force me to discipline myself.

As regards my frequent revisions, here is another reason: Since I limit myself to very short essays and especially since I design my pages with my words surrounded by much white space, I confine myself to brevity ... this often calls for repeated revisions.

   

I am in tune with these traits of Bertrand Russell's:  (from my essay  RUSSELL)

My paragraphs and sentences are constructed painstakingly, words are chosen carefully and since English is my second language, I use the dictionary & thesaurus extensively.

This is a labour-intensive undertaking; for instance, I just added two paragraphs at the bottom of  ALONE ... it took me two days to compose them (I'm a slow writer).

However, one aspect of the odd layout & language is that editors find it hard to work with my text, hence I am my own editor …

 

"This is such an interesting & idiosyncratic book,

that I'm not sure it should be edited (really, proofread) at all,

you write very well and it'd be a shame to lose any of your natural voice."

 

... helped by my readers, who may point to obvious mistakes - maybe spelling or factual mistakes - but also conceptual inconsistencies.

I deem my book en.light.en.ment - as unusual as it is - a living thing, with heart and soul, and it will always be a work in progress, forever changing ... still from my impressum: 

“The book is not finished - it never will be, 

“an essay (a poem) is never finished, only abandoned” (Paul Valéry); 

“has anybody ever finished anything?” (Leonardo da Vinci).”

Furthermore, due to my book's format, where the pages are fixed PDFs, I cannot publish it as an e-pub, which in turns means my book is not available on the major e-book channels. In fact, I sell only the printed book from my website.

Anyway, since my essays stand on their own, you don't need to read my book from cover to cover ... you can read pages randomly; open the book arbitrarily; see what you may find; be surprised.

You, dear reviewer, right now are my new best friend, of course ... the most important person in my life. But make no bones about it, I haven't written en.light.en.ment for you, nor for my readers (as much as I cherish them); no, in the first place I write it for myself ... to see my thoughts and feelings on a white page with black & grey ink, to clear my head.

The 2nd reason why I write is to help make the world a better place, as per Krishnamurti ... he believed the world needs a revolution; I agree. See my essay  KRISHNAMURTI

Thank you