This image is the cover for the book Zion and Me

Zion and Me

‘Zion’ is an imaginary place of peace, happiness, and victory. It has been my life’s ambition and pursuit. It has been a dream. An unattainable dream. Since Adam bit the poison apple in the Garden of Eden, mankind has been under a curse – to work at the sweat of his brow for his bread. This causes all of humanity to moan in existential pain. We long for meaning and for love.

Originally, ‘Zion’ was the hill in Jerusalem upon which Solomon built his temple. Zion since then, has come to mean the holy city. Zion is the party, should there ever be one after the defeat of evil in the apocalypse. To me, it is something to hope for, to strive for. However, as life’s problems obstruct the attainment of such a state, we begin to sink into complacency and misery. There’s poverty, heartbreak, and people who want to put you in a cage. After all that - you die.

Zion and Me is divided into three parts. ‘Haphazard Lines’ is mostly Biblical as I had recently converted to Christianity, and includes some speculation on the divine. ‘This Lovely Day’ is more secular and reflects again on life’s melancholia among other lessons to be learned. Finally, ‘Love Poems’ is self-explanatory and concerns various concepts related to love like longing and sadness. Zion and Me is an attempt to explain the ambiguity that goes with the necessity of discovering life’s secrets and to gain insight and wisdom.

Peter Brinch

Peter Brinch was born in Anaheim, California, on August 7, 1968. At the age of four, his mother remarried a Dane, and the family moved to Denmark. Peter grew up amidst the peaceful groves of birch and oak that dotted the green hills of the Danish countryside, forgetting most of his English. He was sometimes struck by the stark, overcast skies of the long winters, the snow idle and blanketing the fields. Aesthetics would later be a subject of high interest for Peter, as well as other philosophical ideas such as metaphysics and epistemology. Peter eventually earned a BA degree in comparative literature from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. However, his thirst for the truth led him beyond the halls of academia – into the spiritual domain. With a new-age, ex-Catholic mother and a strict atheist father, Peter was an agnostic for most of his life. In 2000, Peter became a born-again Christian, and some of his poetry reflects his walk with Christ since then. Peter now lives in Port Townsend, Washington, dreaming of buying an aquarium and perhaps adopting a cat from the animal shelter. He remains unmarried. 

Austin Macauley Publishers