Justice Divine — The Minute I Say "I Do."

Justice Divine
The Minute I Say "I Do."

The Ideal of Living
Money is very important for living
to live and survive
in the city
or on a ranch
if you could grow your own food
write for enjoyment
to get people's attention
like to write
love to write

Copyright © 2006 Justice Divine. Published with Permission by the Author.

Justice Divine, who was once known as Regina Jordan, is an authoress living in Oakland, CA. Her unpublished novel is The Minute I Say "I Do".

She called Green Knight Publishing this morning. Green Knight Publishing, which has sat back and laid fallow like an overgrown field buried under a jungle of spam. Like a castle hidden in the ivy. This book only has something to do with the world of King Arthur, Merlin, the Holy Grail and the Knights of the Round Table on a metaphysical basis, and on an ironic real basis that my number was still in the book. She called me, after trying a dozen other publishers.

So I took off my "Green Knight" hat, and I put on my "Flowers in the Cracks" thinking cap. I accepted to represent her as an editor, as an agent, and as an emmissary. For now, without charge. We can get to that element later. Right now, we have a deal. On a verbal agreement, a wing, and a prayer.

Justice Divine is a beautiful, self-selected name. She is a member of the Acts Full Gospel Church of Christ in God. Justice Divine owns no computer. No phone of her own. She just moved.

Justice Divine is a 36 year old woman in Oakland, California. A land of sheltering oak trees in the midst of the land of heat. An oasis of the spirit in the midst of the desert.

Justice Divine has already written this book, The Minute I Say "I Do." She just needs the possibility of publishing it. I know what's required, from R.R. Bowker listings to Amazon.com Affiliate set up. Yet her book ideas, her hopes, are so big that my humble talents and my capital resources are too small for it's true success. Perhaps we can find a proper place in the world for her book. That's what I'd like to do. To find it the best home.

Justice has bestowed upon me her consent to help get her book edited and properly prepared for publishing. For her and for myself I dropped into a few doors and made a call today. It's too early to speak of who or what, and I have my reasons why. It is merely a few possibilities I wish to check on. I need to do some other work for my daily bread too. Just a quick thought here and there for Justice. A flower in the crack in the blink of an eye. And then, on to the next moment.

Justice Divine. That's a name that sticks with you. So is The Minute I Say "I Do." To be honest, I have not read this book. I just heard about the thought of it. Just the title. It is about the thoughts of a woman (or I suppose ideally also a man) as they commit themselves to a relationship. A marriage is sacred under the eyes of God and legally binding before the laws of mankind. Of course, it made me think that all the moments of our lives could be lived that way.

I heard about her book. I accepted her call because I could hear good Justice implictly asking me for my assistance. I heard her proposition. When a call like that comes in, there's only one thing you can say at first:

"I do!"

Thinking about the possibilities, I said, "I will." I will help Justice get her book to readers. It is just one of many things I have on my plate in life. It is on the plate. I wish to commit through this project, "Flowers in the Cracks" to seeing it done.

I wish for the name Justice Divine to reach your ears. I wish you could hear her gentle voice. The poem above was not a conscious effort on her part. I simply listened to what she was saying to me. I was writing down notes, as I often do in a Silicon Valley meeting. From that came the poem. Her voice is lyrical. Hopeful. Filled with trepidation that it is really happening. Like at one's own wedding. The belief and the disbelief all at one time that she was getting a person who had published books to listen to her and saying, "I do."

When she had spoken nine lines of her hopes, her dreams, her most natural thoughts, I asked her to name her words.

The Ideal of Living.

I once learned the difference between involvement and commitment in terms of the breakfast table. The chicken is involved. It gives an egg. It sacrifices a thing of itself, but not itself directly. The pig? It's no chicken. Its puts its bacon on the line. So I sacrificed a bit of my time today, to at least involve myself with the possibility of Justice Divine's new book. It is the egg of the chicken. It is the egg in the incubator of thought.

In the musical 1776 there is the lyric:

You know it's quite bizarre
To think that here we are
Playing midwives to an egg

All:
We're waiting for the chirp, chirp, chirp
Of an eaglet being born
We're waiting for the chirp, chirp, chirp
On this humid Monday morning in this
Congressional incubator

Franklin:
God knows the temperature's hot enough
To hatch a stone, let alone an egg

We are caretaking the egg of her novel. Readying it to hatch out. Chirp! Chirp!

It was somewhat warm today in Mountain View, California. Yet the heat and humidity of those days leading up to July 4th in Philadelphia were far hotter. Instead, the heat was radiating from the ideas alone. My mind was ablaze. I had heard of this phenomenon before. I thought about the words of Henry Lloyd Garrison, as celebrated in Henry Mayer's book: "All on Fire!"

Mr. Garrison had an epiphany in his own way. He'd have been a blogger had he the same technology in the 19th Century. Copying articles from other "radical" liberation newspapers, scrawling all day and setting type by hand, and doing in any way he could to put forth the simple proposition that no one in the United States should be the slave of another.

In a way, I'd like to create a radical act of liberation. The property is expressional, intellectual, not human bodies. I'd like to help Justice Divine get her book published. To liberate her little egg of an idea. To make it available to the public. Yet as Justice points out, she would like to be paid for her creativity. If we try to get her work without paying her, if she is not volunteering it, she cannot thrive.

This is just Justice's first book. It will be a short one. It still needs to get from manuscript form to be input to a computer so we can get it (if necessary) edited, revised, perfected, and then ready for publishing. It may already be perfect as it is now. In a way it is. It is already. Regardless of the elbow grease, the proofreading notes, the discussions, the bills and the other work it needs to get into the printer's, the distribution systems, and the booksellers of the world — it is already perfect.

Reading over her poem above, I almost wanted to correct it. "or on a ranch, if you could grow your own food." You wouldn't need money then would you? Well, of course you do. A lot of it. Just to pay property taxes, if nothing else. We all require money at some level or other to live in these United States. Even if very little. And in point of fact, many ranches and farms are not cheap to maintain. All the farmers growing the food need to thrive too. So, yes. Justice, you had it right. As was once said by an entrant to the Edward Bullwer-Lytton contest decades ago, "If you want to eat, you've got to work, and at last I knew Pittsburgh."

If there are any sponsors out there who would wish to help see this book get to print, open your hearts and your minds and your third eyes and your wallets. If you have computer or an old phone to donate, or any funds you would like to grant to the project, we'd accept them. We'd find a way to make it work. Like stone soup. And we'd put some flowers in the pot to go with it.

Onwards to adventure!