This is my favorite passage from my novella/stage play titled Overone, which is available in a new edition—look for the solid blue cover—on my Amazon book site: https://a.co/d/11LAhhU

This is roughly the passage being read here: The start and the end are added here to establish context—the recorded passage is shorter. This is a conversation between fourteen-year-old Will and his mother Thea, who both exist in the realm of divine beings, in my fantasy [spoiler] about the end of the world. Note: Lines are slightly misplaced toward the end; the AI decided to move the the exclamation “Bravo” down a bit.

Will: “To thine own self be true.” “All’s well that ends well.” I can recite the wisdom of the world; yet I am not wise.

Thea: You are Willie Shake-a-spore.

Will: I think you have named a fern, Mother, or the sex organ of a bee. William Shakespeare.

Thea: Him too (obviously joking). Make your wisdom. Do it now. I will start you off with a stimulus.

Will: I shall try.

Thea: The beginning of a poem by Emily Dickinson.

There’s a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons.

Will: In the spring, there is a certain slant of light that puts sunshine on our breakfast table. I shall call this next thing a dalliance: You might laugh.

Thea: I won’t laugh.

Will: I have a beautiful dalliance in my mind: ham and eggs and toast, or oatmeal with butter and brown sugar?

Thea: Ha ha.

Will: Traitor. The rolling hills where we live have just turned green. There are pastures, other people’s pastures. Chilled, moist air fills the landscape. If you walk into the breeze, it drives the chill into you. I am happy for the moisture come back to the air: The dry air of winter cracked my skin. Sometimes, in the spring and early summer, roiling clouds cross over here in a hell of a hurry. I am dazzled and dazed and a little afraid: the tall clouds change shapes rapidly; the top parts grow and shrink and threaten to drop their rain; they move across a blue sky, and the clouds are both glowing at the edges and shadowy within. This storm of wind and clouds that moves across the meadow beyond our home belongs to me; it is mine, as a son, a daughter, a mother, a father of humankind—forget divinity. It is mine. It is the dynamic force of the world. Own it. Smell the ozone on the wind; hold the rain in your hand: It is yours.

There is a slant of light in spring that puts the sun on our breakfast table. Flowers push through the ground around our house and the outlying sheds and under the boxelder trees that cover the property. The honeysuckle, wild olive, and Juneberry bushes bud, and, at the wet edges of the land, pussy-willows send out their yellow anthers.

Thea: What breakfast has your father made for you, short-order-cook that he is?

Will: Ham and eggs and toast and a cup of black coffee.

Thea: We sit with you and enjoy the same.

Will: Yes. The exquisite beauty of the moment: It’s all there is; it’s all there ever was!

Thea: (Claps her hands) Bravo! I am Thea Overone. Have you ever thought about that?

Will: Leave out the “a” and what have you got?

Thea: Your father is Twain Overone.

Will: Ranking below you and me in the cosmos. Trinity upon trinity. Whaaaat? The mysteries of life unfold. Gee willikers, Mommy. However, this does not conform to the guidelines of the Magisterium.

Thea: The teaching authority of Christendom. They know what they know: They don’t know what they don’t know.

Will: Enough said. I am Will Overone—read id, the Freudian id. No wonder the world is messed up.

Thea: You have been through death and transfiguration, and you still have a sense of humor.

Will: That—is an undiscovered country.

Thea: Which you don’t fully understand yet, because you are only beginning to understand who you are.

Will: I am older than Methuselah.

Thea: You are older and wiser than most of us.