B.H. ARIAS

SEARCHING FOR LYDIA

I wrote this book when I was working as a civilian environmentalist in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. PTSD issues prompted me to write these stories on the advice of a beloved Lt. Colonel at the stress clinic in Afghanistan. Searching For Lydia is a story of a ghost named Lydia who came to me in a time of crisis and assisted me through it. It is told in a romantic way in vignettes and poetry professing our love and ultimately her way of telling me her life story as it connects with mine through the poetry, deep romantic descriptions and love. This was a therapy of sorts, the writing, it is a non-medicinal and artistic way to cope. My hope is that people who have experienced the debilitating effects of PTSD, will find this book a comfort or a help in their times of crisis, artistically and without the major side effects of medicines.

I have since moved from Georgia to Indiana. The years that i lived in Georgia are awash with memories and names of the places where I placed my head to live and sleep in the arms of a special body of experiences. The names of the places in Georgia where I lived have special names like Pea Ridge, Apple Pie Ridge, Brasstown Bald, Bald Mountain, Wynn Lake; the coastal areas of Savannah, Tybee island and south to St. Mary's, and onto Florida. My journey has taken me north through the Carolinas; Parris Island, South Carolina where I went through Marine Corps basic training. North Carolina figures prominently in the Marine Corps years at Camp Lejeune. After North Carolina there was a lovely trip to the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Traveling the USA along I-80 from Ohio to Oregon, which took me through the wide open spaces of the upper plains of Wyoming, especially the area between Laramie and Cheyenne which frankly took my breath away because I had only seen this type of beauty in the western movies and books of my youth. The crater lakes of Oregon shine like newly minted pennies in my eyes as i sped past them, snapping pictures with my camera as fast as my fingers and the bumps in the road would allow. South and west through California and then east through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and then returning to Georgia.

All of these experiences have had an impact on me and my writing. Perhaps this is the way of the writer's experience, I really do not know. I have known many writers through their stories and words that flow from the pages like the waters of the Chattahoochee river in Georgia, the Geranger Fjord in Norway, the Chao Phraya in central Thailand, both sides of the Adriatic from Italy and Croatia, the Helmand river in Afghanistan, the Mediterranean or the ancient Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq. I have seen all of these water ways first hand, close enough to throw rocks into them. I am presently at work on more installments in the Lydia series as well as other smaller works as the experiences fill up my memory banks and countless notebooks.