Maybe its time i introduce myself. My name is Andrew Steinmetz, and I am an urban shaman. I say that because it acts as my primary function in life. As a shaman I was raised in the village tradition. I grew up in an extraordinary small town in central Ohio. I have so many roots in that ground. Family is very important to me. My tribe is large and proud and respected. We tilled soil there for nearly 200 years and we fought to free this nation from a colonial over-reaching super-power. We built up a sustainable town (i know under some dubious near genocidal pretenses*what happened happened theres nothing I can do about it now*). The primary tradition I was taught was the Catholic. When I was small, I wanted to grow up to be a saint. When I was ten though, I wondered about the apocalypse, and thought that if God were going to destroy the world, then he had a moral obligation to render the world's women sterile for a period of time so as not to destroy the innocent. When I was twelve, I marveled at the idea that if God were both omnicient and omnipotent then free will is impossible. At fourteen, I desired boys, and felt that I had no choice in the matter, and that no God would reject a lovingly crafted creation. I rejected the Catholic tradition, and was adrift. I sampled other traditions while paying nominal respect to the one that raised me out of loyalty, but I took this loss hard, and felt that I had to figure it out. I still believed in God, an engaging, active deity to take solace in. Eventually though, I had to enter the city. Being a village shaman I was eager to explore this new world as fully as I could. I lived on the International Floor of the Ohio State University. Instead of going out to see the world, I brought it to me. I made friends with a wide range of characters whom I cherish and adore from all over this world. (Side note, one time we were talking about how different people from different continents smell different and they agreed that Americans smell like chemicals.) I was at the Ohio State University at the time, and I struggled. In the nihilism of my adolescence, I went on strike and never developed discipline. I was lost and the city tradition is difficullt. I had been cared for by my family my whole life and had grown dependent on the magic there contained. The city tradition requires different addictions to be effective.

I keep refering to myself as a shaman. You see I am not a great or important man. I have no degrees nor public accomplishments on my resume. A boyfriend once broke up with me over that. I know still that my life has value. I work at a bookstore coffee shop at one of the busiiest malls in America, a hidden gem called Easton in central Ohio. It was designed as a "town center". It is outdoor and primarily pedestrian. It acts as a separate downtown, a sort of union for the suburbs and a busy hub of tourist business. In the past month alone I have had guests from as far as Montreal and the Carolinas, California, New York. Many fashion executives from the nearby Abercrombie & Fitch, Limited Brands, Retail Ventures, and Express home offices frequent our mall. I make their coffee. I chat them up, flirt a little maybe, and handcraft their beverages so that they may sit and peruse ideas. Sometimes the solitary thinker, sometimes the boisterous exchange of groups, I cater to the world of Ideas. I always check out what the Somali immigrants are reading. One of my favorites spoke in Mandarin to a Chinese guest and they are forever reading The Economist and The New African, so I know them to be educated men who have faced great hardship and I see them too easily derided sometimes. I am lucky to serve them tea. What I am getting at is that while my $9 an hour wage impresses no one, the work I am doing has meaning. I am learning to cultivate a community, both as the primary operation of my work and also within the firm for which I work. As a shaman, my most potent tools are my powers of observation. I am always watching, listening, analyzing, stringing idea to idea like a necklace made of wisdom. I used to be like a snake, patiently waiting to strike and hoarding my venom. Perhaps I am more the spider at this point, just beginning my web. I use these symbols, because I feel that it is time to come out of my cave, to engage with the world that bore me. I wish to use the meager arts I occasionally practice to create a fierce instrument with which to traverse the Arc of My Circumference. I wish to be a shaman for the world, a guide through the murky swamp of existence. Too often the shaman of this world are confused with flashing wisps, so I wish to hone my craft in darkness, to utilize my obscurity so that I have time to craft the brightest light possible so that it can burst through the swampland at once. None will mistake me. Until then, I work behind the scenes, honing the skills of a city master shaman. I need to present my case in the lingua franca of the future era in which we live. Until then I shout into this darkness, and thank you if your're listening.