The Golden Stairs, my second book of essays

 

This is my second collection of essays, published in January of 2024 as an E-book and available from Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-golden-stairs-john-michael-flynn/1144745155

It's also available on Kobe, Apple, Smashwords and some other sites where E-books are sold.

As it says in the book's description, my focus is on the quirky, the common, and the sublime. Through the personal, I do my best to examine universal themes, writing of passions and victories as well as losses and disappointments. 

I use as an epigraph a quotation from the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, who created one of my favorite works, The Golden Stairs.

Here is the epigraph quoting Burne-Jones: 

The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint.

Below is an image of the painting.

If I were to sum up a unifying idea in this collection, it would be that we can't get anywhere entirely alone, no matter how fierce or seasoned our sense of individuality. That no matter how different from one another we may think we are, we have more in common that unites us than we are sometimes willing to admit. 

Some of the essays appeared in a slightly different form in the following publications.

 "Without Papers," and "Radio Days" in Redwood Coast Review

"Imperfection" in Anti-Heroin Chic"

"Leap Into The Sun" in the anthology Beyond The Plots

"The Perch, The Tube" in Spank The Carp

"Living Between The Leaves" in the anthology Being Home

"The Wandering Gene" was presented as an address to The History Club at Watford Grammar School For Boys. 

Listed below are the essays, a Table Of Contents if I may, as they appear in the collection:

Gentian

A Spark Must Jump Its Gap

The Wandering Gene

Talking The Notion Of Satisfaction

Answers For My Noses And Neuroses

The Perch, The Tube

Two Ways To Enter A Classroom

Without Papers

Salvador Mulligatawny, Or What Is A Poem?

With A Calendar In Fading Light I Remember Amiri Baraka

Imperfection

Kin, Friend, Mentor

Dances With The Imagined

Radio Days: Me And My Dad In The Theatre Of The Mind

Aloft Somewhere Beyond Comprehension

Chase Scenes

Living Between The Leaves

One Face From Corner To Corner A Decahedron

Some Say It Didn't Happen

Leap Into The Sun

Starting From Normal

Below is an excerpt from Living Between The Leaves, which appeared in the anthology, Being Home, published by Madville Publishing, edited by Sam Pickering & Bob Kunzinger https://madvillepublishing.com/product/being-home/

....He started telling me that what he called his “best specimens” of stereoscope cards were still at his home. Yes, home is where you keep your valued objects. Waldsmith was in the process of liquidating his collections and, apparently, he had many stereoscope cards, quite an extensive amount. He was speaking to us now in a more sincere manner, without trying to sell us, having shucked off his forced Midwestern friendliness. He sounded bitter as he told us he’d sold off nearly all his valuable books and was “getting out, selling off everything.” He’d had his fill of “the business.” 

Before we could ask him why, he said, “Alzheimer’s.” It was getting worse. The pain of knowing he’d been a thinker and an “archivist and a collector” all his life and now being unable to remember the simplest of things, without any logic to the deep memory loss, without any control over his mind, though he was only in his mid-60s, was too much to bear. Some days were better than others. He couldn’t handle the work any longer. Some days he couldn’t even remember his own name. Thank God for his wife, who wasn’t with him that day, but she was helping him sell off his store on the Internet. He was afraid of what might happen next. An ordeal both terrible and horrific. “What can I do?” he asked. “Nothing.” 

My wife, who works with dementia patients as an occupational therapist, showed a visible twinge of pain in her usually placid face. I felt my own face reddening. A light rain had begun to fall and the few brave dealers who’d laid out tarps and blankets in the parking lot began to gather their goods and load them back into vans. Luckily, we were under a roof and though it was cold and damp it was tolerable. Learning this about Mr. Waldsmith, however, had lowered the heat, so to speak, and made it more difficult, at least for me, to enjoy his companionship. I felt too much pity. I couldn’t help myself. He just wasn’t that old, but without question, by his own admission, his life as he knew it was entering a final phase, one that might have him withering on the vine in a state of helplessness for many years to come. I remember my late mother once remarking, “Sometimes, it’s a blessing to go quick.”