What if?  That’s the question that Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson asked each other nearly 40 years ago.  It’s also the question that every writer asks themselves.  The place where every story begins.  My collection of poetry came into being, because one day I was bored and I asked myself: What if I wrote a poem?  That, of course, led me to then ask myself: What if I wrote a collection of poetry?  Soon after, I asked myself: What if the collection was linked by a theme and included a recurring enigma from Shea and Wilson’s book?  By asking those questions, and then putting them into action, this blog came into existence.

        As for Shea and Wilson, they were both editors for a prominent American magazine.  As part of their jobs they dealt with letters from the public on civil liberties, many of which involved paranoid rants about imagined conspiracies.  One day the pair of editors asked each other: What if all these nuts are right?  The answer to that question, of course, was there would be a great story in it.  By asking themselves that question, Shea and Wilson came up with the idea for their Illuminatus! Trilogy, the first book of which is The Eye in the Pyramid.

        As you can imagine from the back story, The Eye in the Pyramid is a very strange book.  I found it to be entertaining, but it’s definitely not for everyone.  I’ve even heard that a few people, forgetting that fiction is just make believe, have become paranoid conspiracy theorists themselves after reading the book.  As for me, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist.  In a fictional sense, conspiracies are fun to read and write about.  In reality, though, most conspiracy theories lack those pesky things called evidence and facts.

        The main reason why I chose this book, is that I love the back story.  In the end, I suppose this blog has been all about asking the question: What if?  Of course it doesn’t hurt that the book delves into the 23 enigma, which if you haven’t guessed yet is the enigma that I reference previously.   I paid homage to the enigma by alluding to it 23 times throughout this blog (not including today).  Some references were obvious while others were quite obscure (standing in front of the 23 room Pittock Mansion in the photo for “My Children“).

        With my influences complete, my efforts now turn to finishing A New Beginning…  I have a good start, but there is more work ahead of me.  There are only 79 days until the end of the year.  I have a new project to begin in 2014, so I had better finish this one soon.  Before I take a break for awhile, I have one last post for next week.  I hope you’ll be back to read it.  For now, I thank everyone who has read my work.