Publications

In everything a person does, the quality of their inner Intent is either the source of their coherence or the root of their fragmentation.
— from Journal One

Can the moments of a life be read the way a wave is read — by how they line up, and which way they face?

This is the book the framework was built in. It gathers, in one volume, the four journals of Toward a Theory of Coherent Existence and three supporting papers that carry the theory outward.

Journal One sets out the philosophical frame: the Jay, a single felt moment of experience; the Center; Intent; each life keeping its own time; suffering as a signal; and community as the ground coherence grows in. Journal Two reads the world’s faith traditions through that lens. Journal Three sets it beside the physics of frequency and resonance, and Journal Four closes the field with an account of shared mind and the third that binds.

The supporting papers follow: The Jay and the Quark, a perspectival dual-aspect monism; Jays and Photons, a short study of light and relative phase; and Faith: The Fractalization of the Same Image, on the world’s faiths as scattered pieces of one image.

The promise is the same one One Step Short keeps: established findings are cited and reported at their actual size, and every step beyond them is marked as the author’s own.

From the open archive to the page

All seven papers remain free to read and download here under CC BY 4.0, each with its permanent DOI: the four journals, The Jay and the Quark, Jays and Photons, and Faith. The book revises them together for print — a full table of contents, notes gathered by chapter in Chicago style, and one bibliography for all seven — so the whole argument can be held and read in order.

Published by Legible Traces, an imprint of Legible Traces LLC, Kansas City, Missouri. First edition, September 2026. 178 pages, 6×9 trade paperback on cream paper, and a Kindle edition. Paperback ISBN 9798177048673. Cover after Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel.

The measured life is not the life spent measuring.
— from On Returning

What is the distance between everything science can measure about your mind — and the plain fact that it feels like something to be you?

No one has closed that gap. This book does not claim to. It offers something more usable: a way to live inside it.

Drawing together a year's work in philosophy — four journals toward a theory of coherent existence, a paper about a jay and a quark, and a long series of essays that each began with the word On — One Step Short walks the whole path in one continuous voice, shaped as a single day: it opens with a morning and closes with an evening.

Along the way: a framework for understanding perspective, intent, and meaning; a meditation practice you may take or leave; and a promise kept on every page — established science is stated and cited, and every philosophical step beyond it is marked as the author's own. The seam stays visible on purpose.

No background in philosophy, physics, or faith is required. The only prerequisite is the felt experience of being yourself.

From the open archive to the page

The book is the bound and rewritten form of work that lives here in full. Its foundations — the journals toward a theory of coherent existence, The Jay and the Quark, and the On ——ing series — remain free to read and download, and each source is cited by DOI in the book's Notes. The complete archive stays open under CC BY 4.0; the book is simply the edition you can hold in your hands.

The second edition

Released September 2026, the second edition brings the book current with the corrected framework. The equation at its centre now stands in the form the essays and journals were rebuilt on this summer — the twelve letters in their proper seats — and the notes have been standardized to Chicago style with a DOI on every entry, so each claim can be followed to its source. A table of contents was added. The argument, and the day it is shaped as, are unchanged.

Published by Legible Traces, an imprint of Legible Traces LLC, Kansas City, Missouri. Second edition, September 2026. 148 pages, 6×9 trade paperback on cream paper. Paperback ISBN 9798172222221. Previously published as One Step Short, first edition, July 2026. The book is a commercial release under conventional copyright; it is not offered under CC BY 4.0.