It’s Easter weekend in the West, though not for us Orthodox people in the West, who have to wait until May for our Paschal feast. But Easter has brought us cold sun and beautiful frost after weeks of what has seemed like endless rain. And the clocks are about to change. All of this taken together means the turning of the year. If we’re lucky, we might even get a summer. You never quite know around these parts.
The news here this week is that I have just delivered the first draft of my Machine book to the publisher, and am awaiting the verdict. In the meantime, I can begin to think of future essays I want to begin for the Abbey, and the general direction of things here. Watch this space.
If you’d like to listen to something in the meantime, I have just been interviewed for the Honestly podcast, which is run by Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press. It turns out that Bari is a longtime reader, and she used the conversation to try and paint a picture of my work and journey. You can listen to it here.
I enjoyed the conversation, but I always feel disappointed in myself when I come away from these things. I usually feel I have failed to get across what I actually think. It’s hard to talk about your life’s work in an hour and a bit - it would be hard enough to talk about it in a 500 page autobiography - and afterwards I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could have answered most of the questions better, and all the things I should have said instead. This is why I am a writer, not a broadcaster. Still, I hope that some people might get something from it. If I was satisfied with my work, I suppose it would be time to retire.
I plan to spend most of my Easter weekend working on the land. It’s the most reliable way I’ve found to get me out of my head. I hope you enjoy yours. In the meantime, as ever - the floor here belongs to you. Talk about anything you’d like.
The Honestly podcast was challenging and compelling. You covered a lot of ground. It helped me put together several of the strands of your biography and your overall work. Good job!
Bari is a Zionist backing the current genocide. Gross.