I am new here and even newer to your writing more generally. Which is to say that what I've read of your work, your "meager literary output," as you modestly put it, exponentially pales in comparison. However these words of yours really hit home for me: "The spirits in my tales stand as symbols of the forces we cannot dominate, restrain, cajole, or control. In the stories, these are preternatural entities, some threatening, some salvific. In real life, though, we are met with equally unruly forces every day and everywhere. Whether or not we discern a moral order revealed in their interference is largely up to us."
You see, what a few too many more than I might care to admit have characterized as my already meager grip on sanity - my ability to discern moral order and consistently act with compassion thereby - was profoundly threatened by the interference of an utterly malevolent turn of spirit in my wife's psyche that haunted her unto death last year. Now, among other things, in writing here, I seek to support all efforts toward the possibility of ongoing discovery and engagement with salvific discernment in contemplative silence - which I am grateful to have been able to sustain and be sustained by throughout her 'illness' and death. From the little I've read of your much more than meager published work, I believe you are on about something similar, and I intend to continue drawing here on what is quite apparently the deep well of your discernment. Thank you!
I am new here and even newer to your writing more generally. Which is to say that what I've read of your work, your "meager literary output," as you modestly put it, exponentially pales in comparison. However these words of yours really hit home for me: "The spirits in my tales stand as symbols of the forces we cannot dominate, restrain, cajole, or control. In the stories, these are preternatural entities, some threatening, some salvific. In real life, though, we are met with equally unruly forces every day and everywhere. Whether or not we discern a moral order revealed in their interference is largely up to us."
You see, what a few too many more than I might care to admit have characterized as my already meager grip on sanity - my ability to discern moral order and consistently act with compassion thereby - was profoundly threatened by the interference of an utterly malevolent turn of spirit in my wife's psyche that haunted her unto death last year. Now, among other things, in writing here, I seek to support all efforts toward the possibility of ongoing discovery and engagement with salvific discernment in contemplative silence - which I am grateful to have been able to sustain and be sustained by throughout her 'illness' and death. From the little I've read of your much more than meager published work, I believe you are on about something similar, and I intend to continue drawing here on what is quite apparently the deep well of your discernment. Thank you!
Thank you for your gracious words. Your honesty regarding your wife and struggles is also appreciated. Not easy to share, I know.
Considering reading your ghost stories.
Your writing about them is compelling.
Thought l would share a poem by Mario Luzi, translated by l. L. Salomon:
Caught in the Light
Caught in the light, someone stirs between the walls . . .
perhaps it was you, now it's a ghost
or perhaps it's everything that has no peace,
place, motion and it's neither true
nor insubstantial-an empty thing that only
perfect mirrors reveal trembling.
An incorporated image, never at rest . . .
it is ours. I thought it a chimera
when someone uncensored appeared miraculously
under arid hillsides
on dark roads where nothing lives any longer,
nothing except hope for thunder.
Thank you for that remarkable poem. I certainly hope you will read my ghost stories and let me know what you think.