Chad Mitchell

I am a gay writer who was born in New Orleans but have spent most of my life in Southern California. HomoEros is my first official publication. As I state in the preface to the book, “the odes and lamentations presented in this collection were first written down as entries in my personal journal over many years up to and including the present. Together these journal entries chronicle my ongoing struggle, as a gay man, to become a whole person within the collective maelstrom of human existence.” Having spent many years in Jungian based dream analysis, I feel that, like dreams themselves, the odes and lamentations presented in this collection emanate from a greater archetypal reality. In the preface, I compare the odes and lamentations to stained glass windows fashioned out of words and assert that the light that illuminates these windows is the unique vision that each reader brings to them. John Waiblinger is certainly one reader who has brought his own unique and extraordinary vision to the odes and lamentations presented in this collection. Collaborating with John on this project has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. As I also state in the preface, “before I became acquainted with John, I never could have imagined that my journal entries would come to life the way they do in John’s astounding images. Like the journal entries themselves, I feel that John’s images also emanate from the greater archetypal reality of Psyche and HomoEros and chronicle his on meditations on gay love and longing.” It is my hope that this collection of my writings coupled with John’s images will resonate with other gay men who struggle with their own existential crisis of being and their own longings for love and the desire to find a place for themselves in a spiritually bankrupt and heterosexist dominated society.