Letter from the mist

and an update on Being Pagan

The past few days here in the Ardennes have been days of mist, intense fog throughout most of the days and deep into the evening shrouding everything in a mystical closeness.

Such times strange, beautiful times. Riding my bike through mist-filled darkness, I’ve seen surprising things just as surprised to be seen as I was to have seen them. A few nights ago I found myself staring at an owl, less than a meter from where I stopped. It stared, I stared back. It didn’t move until I moved, as if we’d both decided the other was fine as long as we were both still.

The next day I watched a massive fox, one so big I mistook it first for a loose dog, saunter with its bouncing walk through a nearby marsh. It didn’t regard me, but I am certain it knew I was there.

Such beings have been my world now for more than a year and a half, the people of my neighborhood as it were. I see many more animals than I do humans most days; only the ravens themselves are a population much greater than the number of people I can count by name.

It’s just past mid-November. A peculiar anniversary is approaching, two years since I fled an abusive marriage into an uncertainty that has become the most stable and beautiful life I’ve ever known. Ì’d never even thought on the Ardennes before first coming here, and now they seem to me the home to which I have finally returned.

I’ve been…busy. I didn’t notice how busy until putting together something for the publisher I run. It was this:

Those are the 30 books we’ve published since starting about 7 years ago. Ten of those were published in the last 12 months (the most recent one—mine—comes out next week). Those ten, I should mention, were laid out and edited by one person, and that person is currently kind of exhausted but nevertheless quite damn proud.

That person is me.

The place I live and especially this heavy fog have been quite conducive to a kind of reflective thinking which I otherwise generally don’t give much time to. I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’ve been doing all this, why this has meant so much to me, why I have continuously given so much of my time and life to it.

The reasons for which I started are not the same reasons I continue. Back when I began, I felt like I had something to prove to others, something to justify. I was a Pagan and a leftist, and of course got scorn, disapproval, and other social shit from both other Pagans and other leftists for that kind of mixture. From the left there were the hyper-atheists and the Antifa idiots eager to paint anyone Pagan as immediately fascist or at best ignorant. From the neopagans, there was the anger about such a stance cutting into their profits and glossy bullshit.

Now? I hardly even think on such people. I cannot remember the last time I really felt I needed to justify some idea or belief to anyone. Leaving social media was the final step towards such a place, since I no longer even hear the whinging critiques of social media zombies roleplaying Gandalf or revolution.

I now do all this because I enjoy it. There is a beautiful, sustaining delight in doing work you want to do, regardless if it pays well or gets recognition or even is ever noticed. I guess we forget that—I know I did—in an era where a social media “like” counts as affirmation. Some things are just worth doing because you want to do them.

That being said, this is me coming up for air a bit. 10 layout projects in 12 months is maybe a lot, especially since half of those were also editing projects and two of them were also books you wrote during that time.

The newest one, Being Pagan, is probably the culmination of all my life’s work up until now, and it’s kinda brilliant. By “brilliant” I mean it’s precisely the sort of book I wish I had read 20 years ago, or even five years ago, and while doing its mise en page I felt all those younger selves of me smiling.

Next week when it releases, I’ll be making a digital version of it available as a gift to paid subscribers here and supporters at Patreon. If you’d like a print version, they are available still at the pre-order rate at this link, or if you’d like a copy for a review somewhere just email me and I’ll make sure that happens.

I’ve a few more pressing things to do this week, but I’ll soon have another essay for you here. In the meantime, I hope you are all well, happy, and able to share some time being surprised at what’s looking back at you in the mist.