I camped in a beautiful place this week, Refugio State Beach, CA. I took this photo, the ocean is carving away at unstable cliffs, causing stately Palms to topple and moms to beg, “Please, don’t go under there.”
Some days it seems everywhere you look you find instability and a cause for fear, we live in these days. We wake up to the records we’re breaking—temperature, population, rage. We go to sleep to the whispers of our fears—it’s hotter, it’s crowded, it’s all on the point of collapse. And how do we carry on? Yet we do.
We jump on the cliffs with our loved ones and we build cabanas in the sand and play a song we wrote around the fire and these things are what’s good, where our focus should be. Not in fear but in fun. Not in trauma but in joy. We stop being cynical and instead embrace our possibilities.
That’s what Leveling is about, two people colliding at the tip top of a building with the water rising all around. Their fears are escalating, but also, love. Because we are still ‘we‘ when it comes down to the end of the day. Our children still sing and play and invent games like Full Contact Werewolf and laugh with abandon while rolling in the sand. And two people surrounded by water might fall in love. They might discover hope at the edge of a rising sea. They might actually set the events in motion that change everything for the better. They might. We can only hope.
Leveling is for sale here:
If you bought it during the preorder period, guess what? It’s in your kindle right now. I hope you enjoy. And please let me know what you think. I’m working on the second installment right now.
