When I was a little boy, no more than six or seven, I woke up in the middle of the night and could barely breath. I felt as if my body was collapsing in on itself, and in my terror I tried to call out to my mother and father who were still awake downstairs, watching TV and quietly talking.

I couldn't.

I tried to cry out, Mommy, Daddy, but I couldn't, and in that moment, there in my own bed, I knew the real meaning of terror. I was there, alive, thinking, being, and I couldn't let anyone else know I was there. Eventually I gave up trying to yell for help and pulled my way out of bed, but I didn't go downstairs. . . I just went to the bathroom and drank some water, then went back to bed, terrified, leaving my illness to be dealt with in the morning. To this day I don't know if I was even awake, or if this was just a very, very bad dream.

Sometimes people ask me, Eric, why do you think so much? Why do you try to impress the world? Isn't it enough to just be happy? Well, no, it isn't. I do want to be happy, but I also want to make a difference, I want to make a mark. Maybe I am no better than our Neanderthal breathern, wanting to make some image, some symbol that lives on after me, a handprint on a cave wall, something that says, dammit, Eric Drummond Smith was a man, a real man, and here, here is the proof! I want my great-grandchildren to know my name. I don't want to sit in the folds of quilts and afghans on top of my bed in the dark and dream alone. . . I want to cry out into the night, loudly and clearly, and I want to be answered. And by God, I wouldn't mind if the whole damn world answered right back.

That is what this website is about: crying out. My second year in graduate school was one of the most miserable times of my entire life: the loss of my mother, the loss of love and friendship, physical illness, and the horrible experience of not knowing what to do next. Then, with about a month left in school, I decided to do something, to make something that says how I feel, how I have felt, what I think. I decided to begin leaving a record of my life, of my accomplishments, just in case tomorrow I can't yell with my voice anymore. And so I have begun this project, Smith's Blue Book. Here I have collected samples of my art, my poetry, my prose, and my research. An inkling of my future dreams is recorded here, a taste of the terrible-wonderful complexity that goes on inside my head. I am proud.

Why a "Blue" book? Well, partly because its my favorite color, but also because of what the color blue means to me. Blue is like the sky and the seas, the color of freedom, of all that lacks boundaries. The lack of boundaries is how I see my own life, my own thought process. I try (though I fail) to be a true scholar, a man of letters in every field. I study everything, and like so many paints on a single canvas, they all blend together, the arts, the sciences, the social sciences, the religion and the philosophy, churning into one another until they are indistinguishable. This Renaissance idealism is both my greatest strength and my gravest weakness (ask me someday over a drink about how I feel about specialization). So why blue? Because I am blue.

And so, a word about my work. I love dinosaurs. Just yesterday, I saw a friend of mine who I had not spoken with since elementary school, and you know what he asked me? He looks at me, as serious as a heart attack, and he says, "So, are you still hung up on dinosaurs?" Yes, I said, I guess I am. When I was a kid, I read everything I could on paleontology, embracing it, loving the dinosaur, the power of the thing, the idea of it: ancient, noble, great, out-moded. I saw in myself many dinosaurian characteristics, dreamed of having terrible strength. I read and read until I had exhausted the supply of dinosaur books at my local library, and so I moved on, broadening my purview: archaeology, anthropology, biology, history, geology, astronomy. These led to interests in mythology, politics, religion, philosophy, and pretty much every other imaginable discipline. And art, oh art. I was drawing dinosaurs as early as I can remember. I would study them in books and encyclopedias. And one day, as I was flipping through our worn old "D" copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I accidently found the entry on Albrect Düher. His etchings, my God, they moved me. The image of the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse burnt itself hard into my mind, solidifying, touching my every waking hour. I thought the etchings were pen and ink drawings and went to work trying to learn the technique immediately. That was it, the moment I became a real artist. As time would go on I would read so much, see so much, hear so much, and now, I am trying to do it all, to understand it all. I spent so much time on my studies (and in the act of recovering from my constant childhood illness) that I became classified by my peers as a nerd, a social misfit. And so I began observing human beings with the same cold, calculated precision I had been applying to dinosaurs and mythology. And I used my accumulated knowledge to actively and conciously transform myself, moving up the social ladder at an Olympic pace. Finally, my freshman year in college, I read Machiavelli's The Prince, and I saw there a man who did what I wanted to do: held a mirror to the face of humanity, and did it on terms that anyone should be able to understand. And I realized that while anyone should be able to understand it, almost no one did. This was an essential lesson for me. And so I took on my personal philosophy: I became an idealist realist. Find the best, fight for it, fight as hard as you can, never take the slights against you too personally (if Machiavelli forgave those who tortured him, truly I can forgive those who took my change to buy soda pop), but realize, like in some Shakespearean play, you ain't gonna' win, never. Not completely, at least, and in the end we all die with a plate full of things we should have done, should have said. But we can still live well, work hard, make a difference, and have some good moments (soliloquies cried out to an invisible audience). And I learned that people matter, that they really matter, that I have to help them, to react to them. I forgot how to hate. Thanks to Machiavelli, no matter how much I love dinosaurs, no matter how much I envy them, I realize I am a human being. And now I write about men, now I draw women, now I try to become a child again.

I am a fool, trying to catch all the seeds of a dandilion, not realizing that with each movement of my hand, I push the seeds ever farther away. But I try, and I will keep trying, because I don't know what else to do. I hope you enjoy my work, I hope that it gives you some insight into yourself, or into the Platonic leviathan that is our species. But mostly, if I was to be honest, I hope you are impressed, that you think to yourself, my goodness, this lad, why, I think he must be on the right track. And I hope you remember my name. And to all my family, my friends, my mentors, my peers, and all the hundreds of writers, artists, scientists, social scientists, leaders, and ordinary folks who have influenced me, I send you my thanks and my apologies. . . I would list you all, but hell, I don't have that kind of time. And if any of you hear from God, tell him I am still waiting on a response. . . impatient, but still waiting.

Sincerely,
Eric Drummond Smith
July 8th, 2000