I was planning on writing this note at a later date, following the publication of my most recent essay on Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza; but that time of year has rolled around again — annual subscription payments — and I feel obliged to provide an update on what you are supporting.

First, to explain my increasing absence on Nostr, and elsewhere, as of late.

I recently had a week out of work (this isn’t my primary occupation, as much as I would love it to be), and I decided to spend it reading one of Tolstoy’s books I’ve been itching to get around to for some time (a first edition at that, 1894): The Kingdom of God is Within You. Before reading this, however, I would read another, lesser known short story of his (another first edition, 1885; and the most beautiful little booklet at that): Where Love is, There God is Also.

This little short story — despite standing at only ten or so pages long — particularly touched me. I would suggest to all to read it for themselves, but what I will say is, I would describe it as simply lovely — “a really lovely little story,” I would recall saying to myself after having finished it.

And it, paired with a break from working on my latest piece on Eyeless in Gaza, not to mention finally giving my religious journey (and it has been quite so) more time, attention, oxygen, room to breathe, really put things into perspective for me.

But it was consciously declining to watch or read anything relating to politics and present affairs — a preoccupation with which would serve as the basis for many of my notes and private contemplations, not to mention time and energy therein — during said week that really helped this new perspective sink in, become clear.

Despite how much time of mine these other subjects would consume, all these things would reveal themselves as, and fade as such into, irrelevance when compared to the immense peace and focus — what I would describe as simply love: tenderness and attentiveness, the utmost serenity and feeling of goodness and good will — that Where Love is gave me.

And this feeling confirmed in me that all these other things I was wasting so much time on, that they are not at all important, more, that they are offensively boring and unimportant, and that what was important, truly important — God, nature, love, peace — I was neglecting by dedicating an ounce — that could be better dedicated to refining, endlessly, one’s knowledge and feeling of what is truly important — to these sources of noise, distraction, which are ultimately means of averting one from this: what is truly important (I would argue by design: they exist in order to achieve this subversion, I have come to believe).

What matters, what I should prioritise, make my focus, now clear, what I shall spend my time not only reading but writing would also become clear: things like these I want to read only, I want to write only, want to invest all my time in only (and I will still watch things from time to time to this end: but only this end), in feeling this feeling, and what’s more, in spreading this feeling.

Ultimately, I want my writing to serve the same purpose: to be a constant, unrelenting source of hope, one that readers can be confident they will come away feeling whenever spending the time on something of mine — to enrich and enlighten too, for certain, but most of all, to replenish in hope: and with it, love, peace, good will — the other constants…

[Read the next note for more.]