【大紀元6月29日訊】PREFACE: GOING AROUND
We had stories and we gave them to our son, William. Heavy with intent, they were the ballast for our shared and separate journeys, steadying us through the surprises and arguments, the differences and similarities. As reminders of our own rebellion and conformity, the stories helped us explore places where parents fear to tread and children will. As portents of our own future, they centered a couple from the Age of Aquarius and Confucius for a voyage with a kid who introduced us to Calvin and Hobbes cartoons and thinks Wall Street is the hub of the universe.
Using the stories, we talked ourselves into a relationship with ourselves and a child who would not only think it’s okay that his parents do this sort of thing, but would also revel in telling them back. The going around and coming around was possible because the stories were more than 「just the facts」 about more than the 「strictly personal.」 As such, they gained the power to shape our lives and influence how others perceive us and the worlds we live in. This book is the result of believing that such empowerment can be shared.
The writing, however, was a problem. To my linear American mind, the story-telling process could be explained with step-by-step directness, taking the reader from my birth to his adulthood, proceeding from left to right, from the top of the first page to the bottom of the last. But my Chinese mind balked. It wanted to give William, and you, images or 「characters」 that would start from the traditional right of a wise Asian elder and end on the 「left」 side of most matters, including the page.
So I selected facts, attached stories to them, then played with their chronology. Just as I did with William. In putting more than one mind and voice into them, I hoped to increase their dimensions with points that he, and you, could think up. Like the stars, these can form constellations—constant yet moving, able to mark places and ideas that are beyond what is immediate and local, capable of tantalizing us with the unseen even as they are visible from wherever we happen to be standing at the time.
ublished by We Press ISBN # 0-9725663-0-9 Available through We Press by sending check or money order for $18.00 (includes shipping) to P.O. Box 436 Allamuchy, NJ 07820◇
(http://www.dajiyuan.com)
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