On my Mind 2024

What I am thinking about, concentrating on and figuring out this year

To have faith, to grow toward love, union, salvation, or enlightenment, we must be moved from order to disorder and then ultimately to reorder.

~ Richard Rohr Daily Meditation 21. January 2023

I have been away from my keyboard for a few weeks with only a brief appearance to write a piece on my father in December. I apologize to those of you who noticed the absence of a Pitchfork Paper in your inboxes and even more to those who reached out and asked if everything was good at my end. It is and was and I am grateful for your enquiry. Writing is a habit and taking a break from it has felt dangerous. Recommencing it, even after only a few weeks hiatus feels rusty and awkward, like standing up with pins and needles in your leg. Bear with me whilst I hobble over to my desk.

It is especially awkward if the hiatus has been prompted by a change in thinking, as it has in my case. A metamorphosis, if you will, an evolution that has an aspect of radical rewiring, although in my case without the assistance of ayahuasca or externally introduced mind-altering substances. I am not sure whether that is a good or bad thing. We will see. For the last few weeks I have been experiencing a crisis of sorts, one of those periods in adult life in which the old way of doing things is brought to a head, in which a flawed system of living stops working and decades old compounded inconsistencies reach a tipping point and demand attention. And change. The proverbial cows coming home to roost. This crisis - and I am choosing to be deliberately obtuse about its nature - has re-ordered my priorities and hence the ontology of my writing. I think this will prove to be a good thing, but I will not be the only judge of that.

This moment, still within spitting distance of the start of the New Year, seems like a good enough place to re-engage and to map out what my preoccupations are likely to be throughout the next year.