Hello dear fans, companions, readers—I would like to tell you that some new things are happening on fromuponfrederickstone.com.

1) I’m going to be writing one blog post a week, on Sundays, as a Sabbath practice for myself. So you can expect new content weekly.

2) I added a subscribe button at the bottom of every page, which means you can be notified of my content without having to check back in. All you have to do is enter your email address, open a confirmation email, which will then send you to a generic wordpress website telling you that your subscription worked (and you don’t have to do anything there), and then you’ll get another confirmation email saying that you are now subscribed.

It would be good for everyone if I baked up fresh content each week, even if it’s just a little bit, or reflecting on other things that I’m working on. When I started this blog, I was abundantly eager. I had just met a wonderful woman, spring was in the air, the pandemic locked all the annoying people inside, and I was primed to deal with global chaos. It was easy for me to gush then. But perennial problems come up for me when I experience a reader who doesn’t like what I’m saying.

The problem is that I spend immense portions of my intimate personal energy developing these thoughts. When a reader responds negatively, it is usually because my approach is idiosyncratic whereas theirs relies on a sense for outward normalcy. Even if a reader disagrees strongly with me, conflict does not have to arise when their reading is not embedded with expectations. People have a hard time reading from or speaking with people who do not think their way. It is not so much the disagreement that bothers me, it is the disproportionate expectations such a reader has with mine. I am expecting care and respect, a circumspect intent to understand and then evaluate. They are expecting care and respect as well, but in the forms of opinions already in alignment with their assumptions yet being more stylistic and nuanced in doing so. I do not like catering to the king. I will serve one whom I respect. I will respect one who serves all.

This is partly why I do not allow comments on my posts. I also think that most blogs and websites are far too distracting. My goal is to provide you space to reflect. Even if you disagree with me, I want to provide you with something that you will probably appreciate: consideration for you the reader, a nuanced and idiosyncratic perspective, a commitment to cutting through BS, a complex cognitive journey rather than those vending machine one-liners dispensed by the Huffington Post, a love for nature and all beings struggling in the process, a writer who is going to be vulnerable with you. My goal here on Fromuponfrederickstone is companionship for you and for me. Companionship by means of pursuit of truth, pursuit of beauty, pursuit of goodness, by means of genuineness and openness.

When I say this blog is for truth, beauty, goodness—I do not mean it is for platitudes, eyecandy, and innocence. Truth is often foggy, beauty is often grotesque, goodness is often raw. A sense of appearing true, beautiful, good is not my primary aim. These are subordinate aims to the primary aims of real, lived experience. If I cannot organize and generate information that launches courageously into the clarity of confusion, the beauty of death, the excellence of imperfection, I have failed. In such a time as this, a season of rocking uncertainty, I hope my words, my sentences, my paragraphs, my visions will “melt into that fierce heat of living.” Please subscribe and stay tuned.


“Self-Portrait

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in this world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.”


—David Whyte