The Time, Right Now...
The right hope for the season.
Hello my friends,
I have not been keeping up with comments and replies, let alone reading. This sometimes adds to stress but, on the whole, over the years, I have realised that there is always a time and always a place for these things, they will grow when needed and ready, the seed is there, after all, a tiny germ waiting for the right light, or warmth, or water.
Today, however, I opened Substack with the intention of having a quick look through the notifications which have built up lately, perhaps not to reply immediately, but to at least smile and feel that spark of joy you can bring through a well-chosen word or a carefully selected quote shared with your own readers. These things are not to be underestimated—they really are a joy.
However, instead, I was met by a comment on my latest chapter of serialised fiction which stopped me in my proverbial tracks:
Please end my subscription. It’s just not the time for it now…
For some reason this made me think, perhaps more deeply than it should have. As I washed and put away dishes from my lunch with Ailsa (swapped from Thursday to Friday, so she could partake in the annual school galette des rois), I kept thinking.
What was this comment? And why?
Every letter I send (as with everyone else on the platform) contains an unsubscribe link. I wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, I’ve unsubscribed from more than my fair share of emails. So why leave such a comment?
If I am feeling kind, something I try very hard to be, perhaps the individual in question simply did not realise there was an unsubscribe button? Maybe their only way, short of reporting spam and blocking, was to reach out and leave such a message? That’s fine, we are not all au fait with technology or the internet, even though it has now been around for more than a generation.
(I replied, explaining that I can’t really end a subscription via a comment as I do not know their email, then managed to actually find them—I hope it was them—on the subscriber list and remove as requested, before deleting their comment and my reply as neither really seemed wise to keep. End of story—apart from this piece.)
Perhaps that was it? A simple, harmless explanation? (I’m hoping this was the case.)
Yet my brain kept returning to this, especially the second part of the comment.
It’s just not the time for it now…
When I used to obsessively check the news, reading and rereading, watching, listening, to all the doom, all the misery, all the horror our world can throw at us if we let it, I remember that phrase reaching my eyes and ears on many, many occasions. Each time there was another school shooting in the US. Each time there was another mass shooting of any kind—it was not the right time to talk about it.
I have now gone 667 days without scrolling or even checking the news. How many have been shot in that time? How many children have experienced something no child should ever experience? Let’s not even get into the wars and destruction wrought in other corners of the world. It’s just not the right time…
What did this person mean, then? Was it sheer burnout at the weight of emails they received? Was it that my fictional stories were not right for them at this moment? Or perhaps my nature or place writing?
Maybe it wasn’t personal at all? Maybe they simply cannot handle another email as they witness our species seemingly hellbent on destroying each other and itself?
To which I answer—if it is not the right time now, then when is it the right time?
To name a thing, to speak that name, is a power. Sometimes it is a power for the speaker, sometimes for the named. This has been a popular feature in story, mythology and history: Rumpelstiltskin, or a demon, summoned, bound, and trapped.
What happens when we do not name a thing? When we do not allow it the time to enter our head or world? What happens when we turn off the television, or remove ourselves from the ongoing onslaught of misery and deception on social media?
Well, for one, we regain a lot of time. We also regain momentum, to do what we should—or need—be doing, whether to simply exist and live, to be able to see the low cloud wreathing the mountain slopes and to delight in it, pausing for a moment to inhale that cold, fresh air, or to laugh loud and long at lunchtime with a three-year-old, as she invents a song all about a dance for her parents to share.
We also gain power over the unobserved.
Does our not watching the murders stop them? No. Does it mean we are somehow complicit? No. And do not believe or listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. Our brains cannot cope with such misery and horror in the eternal fashion it is now dealt to them—we are doing a disservice, not only to ourselves, but also to those wronged, if we lose our ability to keep doing the good work, simply because of overexposure and burnout, or emotional fatigue.
This is something I have heard a lot in recent years.
I cannot write, there’s just too much wrong in the world.
I can no longer create art in such an environment.
I have lost my creative drive/urge/desire/etcetera…
You have not lost it, exactly, it is merely blanketed by a carefully-curated high-powered jet stream of ‘news’. To not keep up with current affairs has long been considered somehow backwards or worse, yet I have always thought that phrase to be multi-layered.
My own current affairs include the aforementioned misty mountains, the daughter who makes me laugh, my wife who I find myself already missing as she prepares to depart for yet another week away training.
Current affairs include checking my new trail camera (currently positioned in the garden, to try and work out why, exactly, there were giant dog—or dog adjecent?— prints in there when it snowed), checking and listing all the seeds I have for the coming season of growth, making sure the book proposal I am still working on is the best it can be, subtly editing and queuing the next five weeks of fiction, or looking forward to catching up with those replies and comments. Not to mention editing that novel.
I could list more—my switching to a new journal, writing thank you notes for Christmas, my rediscovery of the joys of writing with a fountain pen, or perhaps my word for the year, still in the rumination phase (I start thinking of this at the solstice, when I actually think the year begins, then come up with a shortlist by our First of January date, before finalising my choice on or around the [Chinese] lunar new year). I could talk of my ongoing deep examination into my brain—why it does what it does, or it doesn’t do what it should: that one has been very much at the forefront of my current affairs for a while now and I have read many thousands of pages, listened to hours and hours of podcasts, and watched video after video to aid this process.
My current affairs. These things are real, to me, yes, but I am a part of a whole and, therefore, they are real to a wider community, too, those I interact with, whether in this space, or others.
We cannot keep up with the current affairs of everyone we have ever met, no matter what the likes of Meta will tell you. There are limits to the communities our human species finds bearable, after all. And, because we have allowed certain media to bombard us with their own current affairs until we have reached saturation point, I think those limits are perhaps also artificially reduced.
I have been carefully listing, planning and considering the coming posts on The Crow’s Nest. I have lots in store for you after this midwinter break—and one such essay is entitled On Hope.
Hope is tied in with all the above. Without hope (active hope, as I keep repeating, rather than sheer, stupid optimism), we make a mockery of life. Without hope we are lessened and lost.
Hope, and what it means to each and every one of us, is a thing which is malleable, it can change, it can alter its form to fit with the capacity it finds within us as our seasons wax and wane. Hope is a driving force and one we often fear lost when, in fact, it has merely changed its clothing to suit the hour or weather.
Hope comes in pyjamas, it lounges in leisure wear, wears sharp suits, ties, or dinner jackets. Hope dances in summer dresses and toboggans in winter woollens, it wraps itself in a shawl, bares all for naked dips in the ocean, and it does all this regardless of whether you let it or not.
That essay will come. I had a different letter to share today, one drafted in part but not finished—all about the ideas I have for this space, all about everything I have in store: my current affairs. Then that comment brought me up sharp and made me think, made me try and untangle the meaning behind two simple sentences and how it fits into our world right now, it made me think about what lay behind this, about whether such a comment is performative or a genuine lack of mental space for story and word.
It made me think of the necessity of writing, of reading, and of sharing—not just about the big, terrible things we as a species experience, but about all and every other thing, too. It made me remember what it felt like to simply sit down and write a post such as this one, hammering keys so rapidly my tea goes cold and I somehow reach nearly two thousand words in little more than an hour.
I have missed that. My brain has rarely allowed such a thing in the past year or so, and this simple comment proved a trigger or catalyst to release something which was blocked. Will it last? I do not know, but I am strangely grateful for losing a subscriber. A hope arisen, clad in the appropriate clothing for this time and place, a hope which makes me glad I can still write like this, which reminds me of that flow state and all the clarity it brings, word after word.
I do know I have missed sharing such thoughts. I do know I have missed your own thoughts, and your thoughts on my own, too, and I am very much looking forward to returning to this place soon and ‘properly’, whatever that might mean.
I have missed you and I am very grateful you are here but, of course, if you do not wish to remain, there’s an unsubscribe button down below—thank you for being a part of this journey, however, I really mean that.
Many thanks for reading.
Do please subscribe, if you haven’t already, I truly appreciate each and every one of you.
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Or leave a comment or thought if you wish. I always reply, eventually but, as I say above, it sometimes takes longer than others! (But please do not try and unsubscribe in this manner!)
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Thanks again,
Alex
I've been thinking a lot about limits recently, there are days when I feel so saturated by obligation I know longer know what my own current affairs look like or sound like or worse even still, feel like. You write, "There are limits to the communities our human species finds bearable" and I agree, especially for those of us living lives away from our families,(I believe we chose to do this for a reason, whether conscious or otherwise) those of us who are entirely independent, surviving purely on our own resources, those of us who are by nature solitary.
I could speak mountains about time... I'll spare you that though, I know you Know!
This too..."Hope, and what it means to each and every one of us, is a thing which is malleable, it can change, it can alter its form to fit with the capacity it finds within us as our seasons wax and wane." Yes, hell yes! Learning to understand hope, as opposed to dreams or optimism is vital - I'm learning!
Take care my friend, your snowy photos are enviable, here we are buried in browns and greys! x
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I often wonder the same thing, about writing and everything else I do. In the face of all that’s unraveling, all the suffering — it feels at times insensitive or irresponsible to keep doing my thing. Yet who am I to question my soul’s calling? I have to remember I can’t see the bigger picture. I’m also fascinated by hope. (My Substack’s original name was Building Hope.) People mix it up with optimism, but it’s a different and more powerful force. I look forward to reading your thoughts on it.