Quick note to subscribers

Hey everyone, I want to apologize for not attending to comments on my last post. I have been undergoing dental work and experiencing a longer than expected recovery from the surgery.

It has been illuminating to witness what constant pain brings out in my psyche. It really heightens feelings of alienation, futility, and not wanting to be here. These thoughts are quieter when I’m feeling great! It reminds me of how deeply our worldviews depend on our physical conditions (and other conditions). New Age Law of Attraction thinking says that our thoughts generate our reality, but it sure seems to me to be at least as much the reverse. Is it that my “negativity” caused my dental problems? Or is it that my dental problems are making me negative? Or could this be a false dichotomy? Maybe thought and circumstance together form a integral state of being that the soul has chosen to traverse. Or maybe shit just happens, and it is our responses that provide the avenue for the soul’s development.

And maybe, any tidy metaphysical account will always leave something out. The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

Anyway, my mouth hurts. Please hold your sympathy—it isn’t that bad. People go through much worse all the time, and I am on the mend (or I would not be in front of my computer right now).

The thought and feelings this episode has brought up are timely though. Some of you might remember that right before Covid, I was saying that I planned to have a sabbatical, to explore other modes of creativity, for example a screenplay. I was going to stop writing essays for a while. (The feeling of futility was already growing in me.) Well, then Covid came and I stepped into the mix. There were some things that no one was saying, but that really needed to be said. At this point, yeah, I could say them again, and again, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I just cannot muster the will to do it. I get lazy, I get tired, I get sick… hmm, maybe my soul engineers a mandatory pause in the form of dental pain so I can look at it all from a new angle. Thanks a lot, soul.

So, I am going to take a break for at least a few weeks. Except I have one essay I’ve already scheduled to go out in a few days, and it is an important one, one of my best I think. Ironically, one of the metaphors it uses is “burnout.” After that essay, you may not hear from me for a while, except maybe I’ll write informal missives like this one, off the cuff, not real essays. Then I’ll resume with probably some different sorts of offerings. Could be in a few weeks, maybe a little longer. I hope people don’t mind. I will probably continue writing essays too (I have a few in the fermenting vat) but probably not at the pace I’ve been producing them for the last year. You know, partly I just need to stop the output and replenish my connection to the source from which it comes. Including the physical source (healthy body).

I want to extend a big thank you to everyone who has supported me over the past year on Substack. It is you who make the dental work possible.

That was a joke. Thank you all for keeping me writing.

Charles