All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pick-axe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings.
–Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, #43
I kept three notebooks when I was living amid the Palestinians in fall/winter 2003. There were seeds in those pages that eventually led to a the novel, Dear Layla. Using a Beeminder to hold myself accountable with Magan Wiles the last 8 months (9.2014—4.2015), each day I had to do 12 minutes of work to move closer to finishing the book. Here’s an example of “a single stroke”: I posted Arabic Mantra at my Hold It All blog on 10.29.2012, nine years after I was in Gaza. That emerged after my May breakthrough when reading Tamara William’s introduction to Ernesto Cardenal’s book The Doubtful Street — I realized that so many short reflections could find their place in the narrative. Indeed, these “petty operations” became the mosaic that is the whole book.
