"BEACH FLIGHT I" by Linden Laserna
Come Fly With Us
We are breathless.
Astounded.
Grateful and honored.
We believed there must be a niche for a literary journal such as Cezanne's Carrot, one that publishes the literary and artistic explorations of the spiritual, the visionary, the transformative ideas about the vastness of our world; ideas that are older than humankind, yet new to so much of our world today. We figured that if we loved this kind of literary and visual art, there had to be a few others like us out there in the cosmos.
Still, the response to the premiere issue of Cezanne's Carrot surprised us. We assumed we'd hear from a few readers, hoped to get enough submissions for a second issue. We hadn't anticipated just how large the outpouring of support would be—especially the number of writers and artists, both emerging and widely published, who responded. Who saw Cezanne's Carrot as the perfect home for their prose and poetry and artwork with spiritual or visionary qualities that veer it away from the mainstream literary publishing world.
By the end of the day on December 21, the Winter Solstice of 2005, we knew we'd been right to listen to our inner urgings to launch this journal. We had stepped forward in faith, and many like-minded souls came to greet us and Cezanne's Carrot. In the ensuing three months, they have supported us by reading the beautiful works we'd published, by submitting their own marvelous writing and art, and by telling their friends and fellow writers/artists, who told their friends, and their friends, and on and on until the reality of how small the world really is and how interconnected we all are became impossible to dispute.
We've been humbled by the beauty and vision of the submissions. Hardly a one lacked merit, and it became difficult to limit the works chosen to the number we could effectively publish in this issue. As a result, we have an outstanding group of offerings for you in this, our second, issue. They run the gamut of style and content and theme—so much so that it just reinforces our sense that the Universe that encompasses both the inner and outer, both this physical life and what came before and will come after, is far vaster and grander and more complex that we can begin to grasp.
The offerings in this issue will take you on a journey from the micro to the macro, from the world in a raindrop, to the world being dismantled like a giant theatrical set, from the natural to what we think of as the supernatural, from the patterns in sand or clouds or shadows to the patterns that form the Universe.
The short stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and works of art we present here have made us laugh with delight, gasp in wonder, cry out of empathy, shout with joy, and whisper with the awe of being in the presence of profound wisdom. We hope they'll have the same effect on you.
We are grateful and honored to present the works of highly published and prized authors, writers closer to the beginning of their careers, and many skilled and talented contributors somewhere in the in-between. Through their creative expressions, they all offer us the opportunity to see ourselves and our universe from new perspectives—with fresh observations.
We hope you enjoy the words and images in this issue as much as we've enjoyed gathering them for you.
Copyright 2006 by Cezanne's Carrot
