January 23, 2021
I will write the truth with vigor, clarity, and skill.
This is what I promise myself each morning and each evening, and it is my offering to you, my dear friend or family member, or beautiful new subscriber. This is my highest aspiration.
Tonight though, I do not have jazz for blood or a pounding heart powering my charge through time and space and the auto-erotic universe. As I write I can barely glimpse that world.
My body is achy and tender, my sleep-debt unpaid, and my fears active but invisible to labels. For three days I went home to LA, aimless and unproductive in the wonderful world of friends and family, connecting (safely) to essential people that fortify my existence.
But I need to once again fulfill my commitments to myself that went unmet in lieu of my other, more pro-social needs.
My being screams to write the truth with vigor, clarity, and skill.
I am word-making now, courting flow. I open myself up to be seduced by flow, to let it cajole my heart to speak openly and nakedly to a new audience.
Over half of you readers have found me through Peter's journal last week. I am thrilled to welcome you here. The Stoa and the work of its steward have changed my life in many ways over the past ten months, and your subscription to this journal is the most recent and scintillating.
This is a much different place than The Stoa, but a kindred one. It’s a newborn baby—pliable and prattling. I take responsibility for changing its diapers and offering it my nourishing teat, but I want you to co-parent with me.
My invitation is explicit: please contact me with any kind of message if it strikes you right—advice, praise, concerned skepticism, elder wisdom, or playful ribbing. Who are you? To trade real words with just two or three readers is more important to me than a piece read by hundreds.
In some small way, this piece is changing you—for better or worse. If it takes courage to tell me how, I beg of you to muster it. The address is campbell.b.dixon@gmail.com. I hope to hear from you soon.
A few days ago, Peter told me that he likes to see that characters from The Stoa have been popping up in my journals. Since then, Jack Donovan has been on my mind.
He once delivered a yarn on masculinity at The Stoa, a topic and a feeling and a way of being in the world that fascinates me.
Donovan speaks of courage as a "tactical virtue," that groups of pre-human males self-selected which resulted in more effective war-parties. He sees courage as a fundamental feature of masculinity, albeit not unique to those of us with a cock and/or balls. Amen.
Courage does not fuel deer hunts or inter-tribal warfare. Courage is essential in my life in moments like these when I feel hesitant and uncertain, not when I am a big caffeinated penis flying towards my destiny, not when Peter's journals are hitting me right in the chest giving me the thumos injection, not when my fingers fly fast over the keys and I am erased into erotic creativity.
I need courage to rebound from too many days off, facing the new prospect of Peter’s public approval and the audience that follows.
Although I'm uncertain of the result, I'm committed to action. Tonight, I learned a bit of what courage is. It is the commitment to keep doing what you know is right even when you're uncertain of what lies in the mist ahead.
When I got back home today, the mountain was covered in snow. My hand-me-down hatchback inched through slush and ice as Zora and I wiped condensation off the windshield with a balled-up hoodie to maintain visual on the road ahead. Although treacherous, this journey did not take courage. I was as certain as I could be that it would be a successful and safe drive.
After arriving, though, the true test of courage began. Unexamined emails, unwritten checklists, journals shrouded like highway 243 in cold, grey, uncertainty. What could I rely on? Only my skills rising to greet me and the courage to call on their assistance.
Dyspepsia is my life-long companion. Very often it’s an untrustworthy voice, whispering against my highest aspiration. It stirs my belly with pain and hollowness, attacks my spirit with fully-embodied anxiety and subtle dread. As I type its name, the bastard gurgles with recognition and I begrudgingly narrow my eyes at the screen to keep typing.
My stomach does not vote yes on being courageous tonight, but my mind and my spirit sing to me sweetly: “Come along my friend, you know how to write. You know how to give in to the act of writing. It’s time.”
Here I am, speaking the truth in hard words again after a work-week’s hiatus.
Welcome, new readers. I hope to make your acquaintance as soon as I can convince you to write me. In the meantime, I may be inquiring about you myself.
With curiosity and excitement,
Campbell; Crambie; Campi; Hambone—pseudo-mentee and certain writer.
Truth telling...the biggest/smallest act of courage. Well done
Also....glad you made it up the mountain. ❤