The postman rang. He didn't have to twice; I was on the lookout for him. He handed the box to me and when I saw it was from Amazon, my heart soared like Olympic doves. "Could it be? Is it possible?"

"Theocritus," I chid myself, "don't set yourself up for a fall. What if it isn't The Book?"

But the package was the right weight and size. I hurried to my office, clutching the box close to my heart. I felt...something. Some disturbance in the cosmic membrane. It had to be here. Fate would not be so cruel to tease me this way. It had to be here. I had to be holding the book.

I put the box on the desk and sank into my chair--my knees were weak with anticipation. Taking a deep breath to slow my pounding heart, I fumbled to get my letter opener. Shaking, I slit the tape on the ends and across the top, in practiced swipes. By this time my hands were shaking and I knew I might hurt myself if I didn't get control.

I stood, unsteadily, like a man who has seen a vision, and walked around my desk three times. "Theocritus," I chid myself, "if it's not in this day's post, it will come in the next day's post. And you've lived your life without it so far."

My inner Doppelganger answered back, "Yeah, right. But before 2008 you weren't really alive, were you, sucker? It had better be here."

I sat at the desk again, and prized apart the box top, and removed the inflated plastic pillow. And then I saw it:

The Audacity of Hope! It was here!

The letter opener dropped from my nerveless fingers and I gave a laugh--hollow yet relieved, so soul-felt that my eyes misted, venting the emotions that had wracked my very being, down deep into my soul. A weight lifted from my shoulders, a weight that I hadn't known was there until, suddenly, like all pigeons in Venice's Piazza San Marco taking off, that soul-shriveling weight was gone.

I looked at the book and instantly I knew that I would be complete. The Rancho de Rio Grande? A bauble. My car? Mere transportation. My business? Mere sustenance. Here, I thought, staring at the Book, was the partner for the rest of my life. In it I could find nourishment and sustenance on a level that I'd never had before, something that I'd only thought I might find.

I could find meaning.

I'd studied the classics, hoping for wisdom. I'd learned foreign languages in the hope that they would provide an insight into the Music of the Spheres. The great museums? Tributes to dead white European males and therefore worthless. I had played Bach and Beethoven on the piano, hoping that that catharsis would fill the yawning void in my soul--how my soul yearns to be filled--but it was to no avail.

This book, this tome of all times, The Audacity of Hope, was my last hope in finding what I needed to make me a whole human being, one not at war with himself. A real American.

My hands shook as I took the Book out of the box; my heart lunged in my chest. Could this book fill me? Hope fluttered in my chest and I could feel my pulse in my neck.

I looked in Barack's eyes--they burned with a fierce, intense look that I felt all the way to the way to the depths of my soul, where it gave birth to a flame that seared through me from the inside out. I started shaking from the pent-up years of repressed emotion that I had not known I'd had.

I put a finger, very lightly, on His face. I thought I would fall apart from all the emotions that I felt. "Why didn't you come into the life of the world before now?" I asked, with a tremulous voice. "You are the light of the world. How did we live before you? Colors weren't vivid. Tastes weren't real. Sounds weren't pleasant. Where have you been?"

My heart stalled in my chest. I had never been so utterly aroused. Flames licked through me, leaping from one nerve ending to the other, turning my veins to liquid heat, stealing my air and leaving me gasping and on fire. His eyes followed me as I held the book. I know it seems impossible but in some way Barack's eyes did follow me, staring deeply into my soul, moving me to my core with waves of tectonic emotion.

I ran my hand over the spine of the book; a spiral of heat curled through my body. As I touched the pages, my blood pumped fast and hot like liquid fire through my veins.

And I couldn't stop looking into His eyes, which looked back at me--I know they followed me--with a breath-stealing mixture of tenderness, wisdom and understanding that made me feel healed and whole again.

My heart stalled in my chest. How had this mouth-watering perfection of a man been placed on this earth to lead us? To make us one again? To give us hope?

That he had been placed here by some beneficent supreme being made my blood pump fast and hot like molten gold through my veins; an artery in my temple throbbed. "Barack, if I stroke for you, I will gladly bear it," escaped my lips with a heartfelt moan of desire.

I knew I should be measured and so I placed the book down on the desk but could not take my eyes off it. And he didn't want me to take my eyes off him either. I could feel it. His wisdom and caring vibrated through my body like a tuning fork. I thrummed with His understanding. Had he touched me, I'd have rung like a bell.

My throat clogged with emotion and my eyes misted over. I buried my face in my hands and scrubbed them over my cheeks, wondering how this had happened. It was too good, I thought; when I looked on the desk it would be bare, and the book only a dream. I thought that I might be delusional and there was no Barack, to lead us from the valley of the shadow of self-reliance into the pure, clean and sweet progressive air where what's mine is mine, what's yours is ours, and I get to say who's responsible.

I still could not bear to look. For decades all the emotion and desire had pooled inside me like magma, needing to be drawn to the surface for release, and this book, if it existed, could do that. The thought squeezed my heart, its tendrils giving me hope. If the book, and Barack, were not just a dream. Could I risk looking? Surely fate could not be that cruel, but the wager was so large that I had to screw up all the courage I had just to pull my trembling hands from my eyes, to make sure that the book, and Barack, were real, and there, to lead us away from ourselves. Our lost selves. O Barack! We are your sheep! We are your gadarene flock! Lead us, lest we, like lemmings, go astray!

Could I bear to look? I thought I didn't have the courage. I could get up with my eyes closed and feel my way around the desk and walk out of the office, never to return. Then I would never know if there was a book there which was not a dream, not a figment of my imagination, but really there, with Barack's eyes which opened windows into his soul, and the soul of the country, and the whole world. Eyes that could heal us, a voice which could set us free. And a mind which tapped into the mind of God.

But I was brave. I opened my eyes, and it was there.

Next week I will open the book and report on that.