In West Africa, the great oral storytellers, musicians, and even counsellors are called griots. I would be proud to be called griot even if these men and women are also viewed with some contempt and even fear due to their clannish nature; I think of gypsies.

But this story is not from The Bobo Marché and its tales of West and Central Africa although that first book is close to this story’s beginning. Nor is it from The Great Idaho Goldfields Bushwhack, a novella that took me more time than I wanted to spend because I found the characters interesting and the time frame of the 1880s in the gold-towns of the territories fascinating. Nor is it from Herod’s Eyes and His Authority, novels from the Roman world in the time of Christ, although in these two are stories within stories, some humorous, some violent; others poignant and hopeful, all leading to both the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate promise. But, more on these deeper in this site. If I had to characterize the writings of my later life, I would call them religious, dominantly Christian. If I had a title for this time and these works overall, it would be the same as my collection of short and not-so-short stories I Lay a Stone in Zion. One of the purposes of this site is to help publish these books. I consider them, in large part, a ministry, a way to use whatever talent I might have to make the spiritual real. Hence, this first little story.

Spend part of a lifetime doing thing you enjoy doing, you concentrate on that thing and devote your time to making it last and taking from it a library of memories. Spare time extravagantly wasted since all is going your way and time is limitless. Spend time doing what you have to do and time outside your work is spent being dulled so the day after may be confronted. I have been in both places and the time-wastage doesn’t register at that very moment it is being done.

In geology, we are trained not to use the term “at times” when referring to observations, such as “at times the rocks are soft sandstones, while most of the time they are limestones.” This implies that the objects being described might, when you have gone back to camp, change their nature and become petrographic others that make future geologists wonder how you could have got the geologic map so damn wrong. The terms used are “rarely and “commonly.”

So commonly, it might take an outside shock (much as an external shock might ripple through and economic system) to get you off your posterior, well, actually, on it, to write. My shock was simple: although I had stories to tell, a will to minister, I had a sudden realization that I was in the world of Marvell; Andrew, that is, and not the universe of improbable comic-book super-heroes, impossible physics, and gloriously money-making movies. No, I was in the middle of To His Coy Mistress:

But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

I had written much of The Bobo Marché when I lived in Africa and I had it put together by RedDog Books, a subsidy printer. I was over 60 years of age at the time when published in 2012 (an Old Snarf in Kurt Vonnegut’s phraseology). In the five years since, I have written the above books and have more to go. So, the griot in me is also tied to my being a nikiéma, in the Mooré language of the Mossi people, an honored elder. (At least I hope for the honorific part.)

I am encouraged by the thought that Michelangelo started his career as architect when he was in his 60s, although any comparison between myself and him are purely impossible. But I am going to do this thing until they cart me away (West Side Story reference, there). I would like comments, advice, even anything Inside Baseball to help this nikiéma write and publish.

As you will see if you have patience and healthy kidneys, I don’t write overtly Christian stories all the time. I wish to entertain and touch you with hopefully good material. But much of what I write, especially after The Bobo Marché, have elements of faith and spirituality. And much here is, well…different. I hope.

So, all you griots, nikiémas, Nasaradamba, and Nisplghasi can contact me through this website or at curtis.cushman@comcast.net.