"It’s hard to feel old at such times, even if you try."

February and Birthday Letter from From the Forests of Arduinna

There’s a massive stock pot of water on the stove in the kitchen, filled with ginger root, seeds of fennel, anise, pepper, and cardamom, bark of cinnamon, and dried flower buds of the clove tree. I was making a gallon of chai before I headed off to the gym. Now that I’ve returned, I make other things: saag paneer, chana masala, chicken tika, raita, mint chutney, and then pakoras.

Today’s my birthday. As of this morning, I’ve lived forty-six years in this world. Tonight, family and friends will come over to celebrate this with me, and to help me eat all this food I’m making.

I like getting older. Sometimes I don’t like it, but that’s only when I foolishly let myself believe life is like work, like there’s some sort of timeline I was supposed to be on. Did I miss certain deadlines? Will I miss others? Should I have done something else earlier? Should I be doing something else now?

Such thoughts hold less power over you when you let yourself be happy. But letting myself be happy has itself been quite a work, a kindness a younger self mistakenly believed to be a sort of laziness or callousness in others. How can anyone be happy when the world is so awful, when things are so oppressive and unjust?

I’m glad I finally learned to think otherwise, to let happiness be a home in which I live and a base from which I act, rather than an elusive reward someone or something else withholds from me. That’s one of the things age has taught me, along with many other truths too obvious ever to be understood when young.

Sure, the body is a bit different when your older. The accumulated damage from reckless youth persists, while the quick resilience of younger years—taken for granted, of course—is replaced by the harder wisdom that such endurance must be maintained, fed, and cultivated. Stretching, eating well, getting enough sleep—these all become things you remind yourself to do, rather than laugh off as misplaced advice from “old” people.

I don’t know if I’m old. Ask me in the middle of winter, and I’d yawn in tired assent. Ask me before the gym and I’ll sigh and nod. Ask me after lifting weights, or ask me in spring, or ask me just after sex, or just as I’ve gotten a new idea for an essay, or when I’m biking or hiking through a forest, and I’ll just laugh.

Gym-bro at 46…

In these 46 years, I’ve lived quite a lot of life already. Less than some, but much more than many. I’ve been many things, thought many things, and loved many people. Enough for a compelling memoir, at least, and maybe two.

I’ve been now almost six years in Europe. The life I’m living now looks little like the one I lived three years ago, just before I moved from France to Luxembourg. That life, in turn, looked nothing like any of the many, many lives I lived in the United States.

I’ve believed many things at many times, and then found myself no longer believing those things. Other things I’ve believed persisted, but nevertheless unfolded in new ways I’d not foreseen. Each question for which we find an answer only becomes more questions, begging more answers.

Such is life, I think. No; such is a good life, the relentless dance of unfolding curiosity. We’re too certain when we’re young that we know who we are, forgetting sometime in puberty the delight of not-knowing-yet which leads to wonder. The rest of our life after that seems a slow struggle back to the places where we let things surprise us again, let ourselves set out as the Fool to go dance in the World.

It’s been a great 46 years, and keeps getting greater. This morning my husband surprised me with a towering display of roses and fabric hearts, a played-up caricature of the campy valentine’s day commercialism that he knew I’d find hilarious. We’d laughed the other day about a supermarket circular whose graphic designer had probably just been told, “put red things in this edition—it’s Valentine’s Day,” resulting in a “sweetheart” deal on tomatoes.

After laughing at my husband’s handiwork, I watched a cat play in frost-tipped grass outside our window. I live in such beauty, here, and contentment. An ample house with so many windows it becomes a castle of light when the sun is out, stunning views of forests and fields wherever I look. A warm, kind, and beautiful husband. A fulfilling writing career. An increasing number of good friends despite being an immigrant to a country thousands of miles from where I was born. Ever-present gods, close family, and unflagging curiosity about the myself and the world.

It’s hard to feel old at such times, even if you try.

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I’ve many new readers, and as has become tradition here, I like to write a new introduction to who I am and what I’m writing about for newcomers.

I’m Rhyd, and as you already now know, I’m 46. I was born in the foothills of Appalachia in the United States and now live in the foothills of the Ardennes in Luxembourg. That’s part of the reason for the title of this substack, “From The Forests of Arduinna.” Arduinna is the name of the goddess of the forests here, forests which were once so thick and towering that Roman generals and Christian missionaries wrote in fear of the trees’ shadows and what hid therein. Sadly, much less of that forest persists, cut down for commerce, war, and to bring “the light of Christ” to people who were doing just fine with the light of the sun, stars, and moon.

I write a lot about Paganism, and also Christianity, and also about politics. I was a Christian in my youth, was even once exorcised. I escaped all that, but also am glad of those experiences, since it helped me understand both how Christianity shaped the political cosmology of the “west.” Many of the political deadlocks we’re in now, and also much of the environmental catastrophe we’ve created, can be traced to that cosmology. I don’t think I could have understood that otherwise.

I write a lot. Except for two rather dry winter months, I usually publish eight to ten essays per month here on Substack. Some of these are for paid-subscribers only, while most are public. I try to make sure there’s enough of a preview of paid-only essays so you’ll get an idea of what I’ve written even if you don’t pay.

I’ve also published six books (or eight if you count two books I published anonymously), and a seventh will be released later this year. The best place to start with my published works is Being Pagan: A Guide To Re-enchant Your Life, which is also the subject of a course I teach. After that, you might like either The Secret of Crossings, which is a compilation of recent essays published here and elsewhere, or if you like fiction and have at least a passing appreciation of unashamed erotic writing, you’d like my book, The Provisioner.

My next book, which will be published in September, is called Here Be Monsters: How To Fight Capital Instead of Each Other. It’s on identity politics and capitalism, with amusing personal experiences and esoteric observations woven throughout. Its primary premise is that identity is how capitalism is attempting to perpetuate itself and is an effect of human alienation, rather than a solution.

Besides politics and religion, I also write about other things and often blend them together. One of my most popular essays on Substack was on the droughts that occurred in Europe last year, called “The Garments of the Goddesses.” I was also a professional chef for 9 years, so I sometimes post recipes. I also now host a podcast series, called The Re/al/ign.

I’m politically “left,” though that means something different here in Europe than it means in the United States. I’m critical of the delusional idea that we can fix the world through technology, as well as the idea that new ways of looking at the world and ourselves are necessarily better just because they are new. Neither of those perspectives fit well with the deeply ineffectual American left, which makes narrow-minded activists there sometimes accuse me of being “far right.” That mis-characterization used to bother me, but since I stopped reading social media it doesn’t anymore.

In addition to being a writer, I’m also a publisher. I’m the director of publishing of a small press called Ritona (formerly Gods&Radicals Press). Many of my own books are published through there, as well as many, many other books. If paganism or witchcraft interests you, you’d find many of the titles a great resource.

And as you’ve figured out probably, I’m a guy married to a guy. This isn’t a really relevant detail about me, but as occasionally I’ll get angry emails from Christians upset that I wrote something “gay,” it’s best you don’t subscribe to my writing if that bothers you.

For the rest of you, I’m deeply glad you’re here. And, because it’s my birthday and you can’t all come over for Indian food tonight (I wish you could—I’m making A LOT), I’m offering a 20% discount on paid subscriptions (monthly or yearly) until the end of February. Use the special subscription link below for this.

Be well, thanks for reading me, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

—Rhyd