Applying Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah to Modern Global Realities

DREAMS OF THE IMMORTAL CITY SAVANNAH: A memoir of what happens when the heart and soul of a historic city meet the art and purpose of a 21st-century advocate for compassion and social justice. (Art graphic by Postered Chromatic Poetics for Bright Skylark Literary Productions)

The precise genesis of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah, now scheduled for publication by Cyberwit.net in spring of 2019, is an actual dream and its eventual realization as described in the title story. The purpose of this blog and the posts which follow is to explore the impulses, values, and diverse social, political, emotional, and spiritual factors that gave rise to the dream which in time became the book. 

Gift of Redeemed Integrity 

​The note below composed in 2013 provides some indication of what those were. It might also give some clues about what many others trekking from country to country and continent to continent --think immigrants, social justice advocates, victims of human trafficking, seekers of love and beauty--are grappling with in 2019:

I had spent many years staying as far away as I could avoiding a city that I associated more with fear, grief, and pain than I did with love or joy. It is no secret that we have first to claim the injuries that antagonize us before we can release the suffering caused by them. Claiming my own was further compounded by newer challenges that continued to pile up in real-time. These too had to be endured, rejected, screamed about and cried over, confronted, and then finally claimed before healing growth could take place.

For a century and a half, my city––and my country––had been like me. They had tried––like me––to avoid pain at all conceivable costs. Not only did this prove, in the end, impossible, but neither was it (as one finally realized) at all desirable.
​
Terror can sometimes surprise us by eventually revealing itself as a gateway to beauty, just as ineluctable destiny can––sometimes––unlock doors to freedom. Very possibly, more than the transformative grace it can bring to your own life is the gift of redeemed integrity it can present to the lives––and deaths––of many others.

I like the phrase 'gift of redeemed integrity' from the previous sentence because for those struggling with adverse circumstances it reaffirms the all-important value of "keeping your eyes on the prize." That kind of focus can be difficult to maintain during chaotic times in tumultuous environments. Daring to believe it was even possible to do so played a major role in constructing for readers over the period of a decade the writings and visual art presented in the pages of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah.

Aberjhani
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush ArtStyle