The Fabric of Fate

We met at a Compassionate Friends gathering— a once weekly session for parents who had lost children to death. The year was 2000. Her daughter had been five years old when the child´s father accidentally ran her over in the driveway. My daughter Naomi had died, age nineteen, in 1999 after a two year struggle with cancer.

The group formed a small circle of perhaps six or seven people, with some occasionally dropping away and new parents arriving. We all carried the sadness of the greatest loss.

I did not know then that our paths would eventually merge many years later. And now, in 2026, as I write an autobiography, I recall how fate wove the fabric of our lives into a single cloth.

I live in Mexico now, but my friend still lives in Santa Fe, where I lived for over forty years. We remain Facebook friends, and when I could no longer recall certain details from an important time we spent together in Italy and India, we spoke over the phone.

Through those conversations I have been able to gather the important strands of our shared experiences and shape them into scenes that now belong to the epic prose poem I am writing, The Canticle of the Wanderer. The work is now nearly 50,000 words in length and about three-quarters complete. A typical published poetry collection is often only 5,000 to 15,000 words.

The poem has crossed from expression into world-building—a lifetime’s evolving consciousness given form.

Perhaps I am simply an aging artist attempting to gather the scattered fragments of an entire life into one coherent song before time disappears.

The writing is in the third person. The Holy Bible is a primary influence, shaping both the sound of the language and the intent of the heart.

Eventually, the work will appear on Substack, available by subscription. Contact me for more information.

Here is a recent canto honoring the time my friend and I traveled together. This follows a previous canto describing our meeting in Italy.

The Canticle of the Mother River and the Sacrifice of Light

Being the Record of the Burning Shore, the Ash of the Innocent, and the Salmon Shroud 

I

They left the land of composed memory, where stone is disciplined into beauty;

And stepped into the city of the three million, where the senses find no shield.

The cool silence of the sestiere exchanged for the roar of the ancient hive;

Where dung and incense, refuse and roses, are woven in a seamless garment.

II

Crossing at the cusp of Diwali, when ten thousand lamps defy the darkness of the world;

Each small flame an act of defiance against chaos and death and the ignorance of the age.

The marigolds floated upon the river and were worn as garlands around the necks of the faithful;

Fireworks blasted so loud that the very heavens seemed to answer with their own thunder.

III

At the height of the day, when the sun stood sentinel over the river, the companion knelt;

Clad in a sari of the bazaar, she fashioned a design of colored powders and flowers upon the roof.

A quiet offering for Lakshmi, laid upon the tile to welcome beauty and blessing into the house;

While below, the Ganges shimmered in the heat, holding the twin mysteries of bather and pyre.

IV

From that hour, the keepers of the house and the men of the street looked upon her differently;

No longer a stranger passing through the dust, but a soul who had offered respect to the deep.

For the people of the river recognize the heart that bows before their ancient mysteries;

And the gates of the city opened wider for those who brought flowers to the threshold.

V

Each morning before the dawn he went to the foot of Assi Ghat among the worshipers;

Where young men swung lamps and blew conch shells in the ceremony of the river's greeting.

Flames wheeled through the dawn while the Ganges gathered the prayers of the living and the dead;

And the sun rose over the opposite bank, casting its first light upon the bathers in the holy water.

VI

He raised his lens to a holy man and took the image without the asking of permission;

When he returned to the shelter, the pictures of the morning had vanished from the glass.

For in the city of Shiva, nothing is owned, and every image is but a borrowed shadow;

And he said: Lord, accept my loss as a sacrifice, a tithe paid to your holiness.

VII

Then came the night of the softly flowing mother, when they rowed upon the Ganges;

He and the companion Celeste, carrying the small vessel of a fifteen-year grief.

The ashes of the child, a daughter of five years, were released into the matrix of the water;

Mixing with the prayers of the living near the pyres that burn without end.

VIII

They stood as the Witness while the heavy weight of the departed was given to the river;

Watching the small leaf-boats of fire drift toward the sea like wandering stars.

In that place, the conversation between the dead and the living never falls into silence;

For the Ganges washes the sin from the mortal and sets the spirit free from the wheel.

IX

On the day that followed, the companion wrote the air with salmon-colored cloth;

She moved like a poem upon the high steps, an unfurling butterfly beneath the sun.

She lay down as a corpse in a shroud, then rose to fling the rose petals high;

Like teardrops of blood falling upon the stone, a sacred theater for the mesmerized eye.

X

He made friends with a young man who drove a rickshaw through sixteen hours of the day;

Supporting his wife and two boys by the labor of his legs and the strength of his back.

Yet always he greeted the traveler with a smile and looked him in the eye and asked:

Are you happy? — and the question rang in the chest long after the city had fallen behind.

XI

The marigolds gathered in heaps, and the thunder of the fireworks shook the earth;

Until the time of departure came, and the rickshaw moved toward the iron rails.

Celeste vanished into the distance, and the Wanderer turned his face toward the desert;
Where the camels gather in the dust of Pushkar, and the next portal waited to open. 

After The Drought

Each year, when May approaches the land is parched from seven months of drought. It is astonishing that despite this, bougainvillea bloom, and an assortment of other plants manage to flower and leaf. Yesterday we had a hard rain, and it was blissful. Also unusual. It is the earliest downpour of this sort we have seen at our pueblo outside Oaxaca since we moved here five and a half years ago.

To our delight, we have recently met several Americans, only to discover they live right here in our village. And they are artists! Both about our age. A poet who is also a translator and is dual citizen, and an accomplished musician who has travelled the world, composing and performing. This feels like a small miracle. We recently celebrated with a party at our home. The two had never met, and we had never met the poet. Now, suddenly, our little circle is widening — an artist colony of sorts. Who would have imagined?

Writing is taking almost all my time these days. I am obsessed. After completing my travel memoir, The Weight of Air, (available by donation for download,) I have begun an epic prose poem of my entire life. The first forty-eight years must be drawn from memory, but fortunately, since 2006 I have written weekly posts here on My Fairy-Tale Life. They have become a kind of archive — a well I can return to — where moments already captured can now be distilled into poetry.

I have also chosen to write in two distinct voices: one modern, spare, and direct; the other more biblical in tone, expansive and lyrical. My method has become this: I write first in the modern cadence, then work with Google Gemini to help render it into the more biblical voice. What comes back is often surprisingly beautiful — a kind of echo, but different orchestration— which I then shape further. And it happens almost instantaneously. A remarkable tool.

Here is a sample of the work flow. A section inspired by the time after Naomi died when my youngest daughter Sarah had begun studies at Columbia College in Chicago, majoring in dance:

In Chicago
the younger daughter flourished.
The city of broad shoulders
received her dancing steps.

Her life opened
with courage and joy.
And the father
felt gratitude rise
like music.

For the child who
had endured sorrow
now walked
with lightness
and hope.

Here is the biblical styled verse:

In Chicago, the younger daughter flourished, and her dancing steps were sure;

The city of broad shoulders received her, and her life opened with the courage of the morning.

The father felt gratitude rise as a song, for the child who had endured the valley of shadow

Now walked in the joy of her own soul, a testament to the resilience of the living.

They both work in there own way. 

At this point, over 24,000 words have been set down. And about 11,000 more to come.
An average poem is 300 words.

While the writing continues, my old muse, painting, stands to the side, asking "Please don't forget me!"

Steven Boone Artwork

The Weight of Air — Complete at Last

For years, friends and readers have encouraged me to bring together my writing, photography, and art into one work. At last it is done.

Back in 2008, I spent nearly a year circling the globe—painting, photographing, and writing weekly dispatches for this blog, My Fairy-Tale Life. Those notes, along with thousands of photographs, became the seed of a long-dreamed project: a travel memoir called, The Weight of Air: A Memoir of Surrender and Becoming.

After many months of focused work—learning new design tools, revisiting old journals, editing, and polishing—the book is finished. It is now available in two digital formats: a beautifully designed PDF and an interactive flipbook. An ePub edition is on the horizon.

I’m grateful to publish it under my own imprint, Twin-Flames Press, which carries a story close to my heart. After my daughter Naomi died in 1999, I would return each year to San Francisco and stay in the same hotel where we had once lived while she underwent healing sessions with a Russian psychic. This, after all mainstream and alternative efforts had failed. The first time I went back alone, the receptionist, Cecelia, recognized me. When I reached my room, I found flowers and a kind note waiting. Many on the staff had known Naomi and me. Cecelia said softly, “You two were like twin flames.” The words struck deep, capturing something essential about our bond—and so Twin-Flames became the name of my publishing company.

It was under that name that I first published A Heart Traced in Sand, Reflections on a Daughter´s Struggle for Life, about the life and passing of my daughter. That book, created in love and grief, went on to win two awards and taught me the discipline and devotion of self-publishing through InDesign—the same tool I used again to craft this new volume.

It has been years since I undertook an effort of such magnitude. Now it stands complete: a journey around the world, woven through words and images, tracing the dissolving boundaries between inner and outer life. The journey continues—through art, through story, through the invisible breath that connects everything.

You can explore or purchase The Weight of Air or A Heart Traced in Sand directly here — available by donation, with a suggested price of $18.

To take a look at the flipbook for free, click here.

Thank you to all who have followed the unfolding of this work through my weekly Substack posts. Your encouragement helped carry it to the finish line.

The Gap in My Smile

They say bridges connect what’s been separated, but sometimes they just break and leave you gaping—literally. My bridge, the dental kind, did just that a few months ago.

But let’s back up…

Years ago in Santa Fe, my perfectionist dentist retired, and I ended up in the care of a good but less inspired family dentist. During a routine exam, he spotted a small crack in an upper molar and said, “You can live with it.”

Soon after, I left on a year-long journey around the world. Halfway through, my tooth turned traitor. In Madrid, it began to ache fiercely. I didn’t know any dentists, my Spanish faltered, and I was a stranger in pain. Salvation came in the south of Spain, where a friend introduced me to a compassionate female dentist. She took one look and said the tooth had rotted. Out it came.

In Italy, I got a false tooth. It never felt right. For years, I simply lived with the gap, smiling carefully.

Seven years ago, trouble returned. Eating popcorn, a hard kernel broke a tooth next to the gap. I ended up with a bridge—two crowns and a false tooth spanning the gap. It served well until six months ago, when it broke.

Here in Oaxaca, my dentist recommended two new crowns and an implant—a permanent solution, he said, one that would last the rest of my life. Since I was leaving for the U.S., he made a temporary bridge. It fell out a month later. Because it didn’t hurt, I decided to live again with the gap—until the area grew sensitive and I began to worry about infection.

So, the dental odyssey resumed.

The new clinic is immaculate and professional. Amy had two implants done there and was very pleased. The cost, compared to U.S. prices, made me smile wider than usual:

• Implant: 25,000 pesos

• Three crowns: 30,000 pesos

• Two root canals (surprise!): 7,000 pesos

Total: 62,000 pesos, about $3,300 USD.

In the U.S., the same work would have been $12,000–$15,000.

As I lay in the chair, my jaw numbed and the instruments humming, I drifted into my memory vault—visiting the bright rooms of my past: childhood laughter, faraway travels, the faces of those I’ve loved. I realized I’ve had a very good life—even measured from a dentist’s chair.

I marveled at the teeth themselves—how remarkable they are, enduring year after year, quietly doing their work. I felt a wave of gratitude for the Creator’s design, for such intricate workmanship that has served me so well through the decades. Teeth, like life itself, endure countless pressures and changes. What matters is how gracefully we accept their aging, and how gratefully we honor the design that made them so strong.

(See my recently completed travel memoir, called The Weight of Air) 

Memoir Writing - The Weight Of Air

Painting on the island of Kauaʻi, Hawaii, 2001

For four decades, my workdays were mostly spent with paint and brush, shaping canvases into worlds of light and form. Lately, that has shifted. My hours are given to words, to chiseling memory into narrative. A little guilt has crept in—I haven’t been producing much artwork. But writing, I’ve discovered, is equally creative. It is painting with sentences instead of brushstrokes, summoning images from the palette of experience.

The project at hand is my travel memoir, The Weight of Air. Its backbone is the year 2008, when for twelve months I circled the globe, living in 25 countries. Every moment seemed to demand documentation. I carried cameras, sketchbooks, and at first, even an easel and art supplies. I painted, photographed, and wrote—laying down a trail of evidence that life had shifted irrevocably. Those blog posts from the road became seeds, waiting until now to be pressed into the soil of a fuller story.

Route across the globe, Jan. 2008 -  Jan. 2009

The journey was transformative. Early along the way I stumbled into a mental and spiritual state I came to call The Dream. It was more than just heightened awareness; it was a trust, a surrender, an embrace of mystery. In that current, I felt carried, as though the world itself were the author and I merely a willing participant.

This perception—more than perception really, more like a state of being—opened me to deeper engagement with the world around me. Barriers fell, just as in real life dreaming. It is said that to understand mysterious, indecipherable happenings in dreams, one must become what it is that must be understood. For instance if being trampled by an elephant, to become the elephant as well as the one trampled. So I was unafraid, because I was everything happening all at once.

Section from the current chapter, called Northward to Hanoi. Part 1

"Within a day, a cabin had been booked on a Chinese junk, a flat-bottomed sailing vessel now outfitted as a floating hotel, yet still bearing the elegant lines and fan-shaped sails of another age.

What happens to time and space in dreams? It seems youthfulness exists in dreaming because events occur that are not bound by physical law. All sorts of fantastic actions and experiences occur in dreams, and the occurrences are effortlessly woven together into a symphony of events. 

So it was in Hanoi: guided by THE DREAM itself, within two days of arrival I was carried out upon a Chinese junk with eight fellow travelers and five crew, moving almost without sound across the mirrored waters of Halong Bay—a UNESCO World Heritage Site."

Old ladies, near Hoi An, Vietnam

Now, nearing the end of the memoir, I find myself in Vietnam once again—at least in memory, shaping it into words. Soon the path bends toward Malaysia, then Australia and New Zealand. Within three weeks, the odyssey will be complete on the page, though its reverberations still echo daily. At last I will hold the memoir as a complete volume.

I have been an artist all my life, but this work reminds me that creativity wears many guises. Whether on canvas or in prose, it is the same impulse: to bear witness, to shape experience into something that can be shared, something that endures.

The Foreigner with an Old Key

 

Amy and I are about to trade the bougainvillea and brass bands of Oaxaca for the buzzing highways and family hearths of the United States. It’s our annual migration northward—equal parts reunion, obligation, and rediscovery.

We leave our beloved home and two dogs in the care of a capable house sitter—also a friend. Amy will fly first, bound for the green embrace of Minneapolis, where her children and sister await. Then, as she does each summer, she’ll travel to Omaha to teach at a special conference for Native American college students who are themselves becoming teachers. It’s a beautiful tradition—two concentrated days of creativity, mentorship, and cultural exchange. From there, she’ll curve back westward to Santa Fe.

I, meanwhile, will head out at almost the same hour—but in a different direction. Nine days in Mexico City call me like a raucous poem. It’s one of my favorite places to lose myself. I plan to wander with camera in hand, letting the streets speak—finding texture, light, and surprise in the swirl of life. Then north to Santa Fe, where Amy and I will reunite.

With our friend Dorsey (on left) from last years visit.

Santa Fe… always a mixture of memory and mystery. So many chapters of my life unfolded there—children born, a home built, decades of painting, friendships, love, and loss. Now, we mostly return to tend the past. Our storage unit, once packed like an overstuffed closet of old ambitions, has been pared down several times. What remains are mostly artworks—paintings and drawings from across forty years. Some whisper. Others still shout.

Old church at Trampas, north of Santa Fe.

This time, we’ve planned at least one excursion northward—to Taos. I can already see the long New Mexico sky stretched taut over sagebrush and silence. It will be good to be there again, if only for a moment.

And yet, returning to the U.S. feels stranger each year. America, viewed from afar, seems like a place in costume—trying on identities, discarding norms, reinventing itself anew with each news cycle. From the outside, it can feel surreal. From the inside, I expect it will feel even more so, given my earliest memories of my home country. This time, I arrive not quite as a citizen, but something closer to a visitor. A foreigner with an old key.

Meanwhile, The Weight of Air, my travel memoir, continues to unfold. I’ve reached the halfway point—both in writing and in the journey it chronicles. At this moment in the manuscript, I’m on the cusp of a great leap—from Europe to Africa. From Rome to Nairobi. From the ordered splendor of cathedrals and museums to the raw pulse of red earth, elephants, and the unknown.

Here’s a passage from the upcoming chapter, The Dark Continent:

Before leaving the United States, my mother pleaded, “Please don’t go to Africa—they’ll kill you for your shoes.” Her fear rang with maternal dread, fed by newsreels and phobias. But how could the journey bypass the very cradle of life?

The so-called Dark Continent called out like a siren, and something deep inside answered. It wasn’t a choice, not really. Fate had stirred, and the path opened.

Tucked in my bag was the yellow booklet—stamped with dates and signatures, proof that my body had been armed against yellow fever, typhoid, and whatever else the unknown might deliver. The vast savannas, the promise of wild beasts and red-dust roads, stirred something restless.

To once again be a white pebble on a black sand beach.

Africa promised danger, yes—but also the thrill of raw existence. And I was already leaning forward.

 

Writing this book is a journey in itself—one that runs parallel to these annual migrations of ours. Like any good traveler, I’m packing more than luggage these days. I’m carrying decades, images, voices, and dreams. 

Off we go.

Read more from the memoir: The Weight Of Air

A Shooting Star

 

The mid wife looked up at me from where my newborn child lay and asked, “Do you want to cut the cord?” It was a special moment in the living room of our little house. The doctor stood nearby and my tired but happy wife lay on her back with the baby on her stomach.

Doctor, at birth of Naomi

Morning light streamed in the bank of windows nearby. I took the scissors offered me and cut the cord—separating mother and child. About a foot of cord stayed attached to my daughter’s navel. I hardly could take my eyes off her, marveling at her perfection. The day: January 11, 1980. 

Newborn

Tomorrow would be her 41st birthday. Naomi died when she was but nineteen.

There are countless mysteries in life, and most of them will not be unravelled. I will have many questions when I cross over to the other side to reunite with Naomi and my ancestors. Then, as I stand in the light of truth and divine love, understanding will be given.

Colored pencil drawing Naomi made hours after learning of her cancer

One mystery that haunts me is the dream I had when Naomi was 12. I woke up with a feeling of extreme sadness and dread and then wrote the details down. It was a marvelous dream in all respect—full of awesome symbols of power and beauty—yet in the end the death of a child occurred. I could not understand its importance and even went to a psychologist to unravel the meaning. I made a painting using its images. Then, when Naomi was diagnosed with terminal cancer at age 17, I thought about the dream again. 

I will carry this mystery with me until the end of my days.

In the dream, which occurs at dusk, after witnessing an amazing flock of birds fly by, I ask for a sign and it is given immediately—a shooting star racing through the evening atmosphere, fiery, fast and bright—just above barren winter tree tops. More events unfold, before the sudden surprise ending that left me gasping when I awoke.

And so too, Naomi’s life was short and bright, for especially in the two years of her struggle at the end, she incandescently shed light as her life burned up. 

I am filled with a wonderful sense of happiness. It is an indescribable sense of utmost freedom and joy. When I am in touch with it I just think, Oh, God, thank you for this beautiful body and life. I have learned how to use THANK YOU throughout everything.
  —Naomi, age 18

The book I wrote about Naomi is available in print and digital edition: A Heart Traced In Sand

Hey Fat Man!

From my perch atop the wood fence behind my tenement apartment in Chicago, Illinois, if I spied the delivery man driving through the alley I gave him a shout out: Hey fat man! The big negro would smile, wave through the open window and respond with a cry, Hey skinny boy!  It became a game for both of us. I was four years old.

My father was finishing his studies for a master degree in criminology at the University of Chicago. On the side, he worked two jobs to support his young family. We were poor, but I did not know it. My mother stayed at home, minding me and two younger brothers.

I had a tricycle that I rode on the pavement behind the apartment. One day a woman was hanging wash on a line and I accidentally bumped my bike into her pail of clean clothes. Oh my, did she lash out scolding me. It was the first instance of human rage I ever experienced. I began crying loudly. My mother came outside, gathered me safely in her arms and apologized to the neighbor. I remember mother was embarrassed—another new feeling to me. Thus the beginning of learning about differentiation.

I played at a nursery school in the afternoons. It was a big place in Hyde Park for the children of poor families. We had guided play, meals, nap time on cots, and recess where we ran outdoors on a concrete playground that had a stagecoach in the corner. My first playmate was Darnell. He was black and I am white but neither of us knew. We did not know how to differentiate. I can still remember the love between us and pure joy of innocent comradeship. We were soulmates!

Our building was heated in the winter by a furnace in the basement that burned coal. During the cold months, a huge mound of black rock was piled out back. The building janitor was responsible for keeping coal in the furnace. He became friends of ours and one night my father took me to see him shoveling coal into the furnace. In the darkened room, the fiery furnace sounded with roaring flames. The iron doors opened. I stood at my father's side, reaching to hold his hand. The fire was at my eye level just feet away. I felt the warmth and saw the dancing light—like magic. Then the doors shut with a clang and we went upstairs. I could feel the love of my father and the janitor. They too witnessed the simple beauty of the moment; made special through my first experience of it.

I always slept with my brother Wade. One Sunday morning when I woke up, he was not beside me. I went to my parents and asked where he was. He could not be found. We looked all over. My mother was so frantic she looked under the living room couch although it only had an inch of space. In despair, the janitor was called upstairs to help us. I went in the darkened closet near my bed. Lifting up a pile of dirty laundry on the floor, there was Wade—fast asleep. Everyone gave out a cry of relief and some laughter followed. 

I will never forget my mother getting down on her knees and looking under the couch.