Bismarck (German Battleship, 1940-41) Afloat just after launching, at the Blohm & Voss shipyard, Hamburg, Germany, 14 February 1939.

It seems to me that I haven’t written here recently especially as I am on a writing sabbatical with more time than usual. Once I began writing here, I took on an obligation to try, at least, to regularly bring something of substance to the page. You, I imagine, have a similar if not obligation, at least inclination, to read. [Some of you even subscribe which helps makes everything possible.] In this way between the many of us, we participate in the creation of what we hope will become a significant culture at a period in history when it is desperately needed. What we are thinking about matters more than ever before, I believe. And what develops when we are thinking together, matters very much as well.

One thing I was doing when I stopped teaching on July 1st was helping to bring the novella which I have written, The Story that Must Not Be Told, to completion. Consequently, it should be available in two weeks or so. It is a strange book, unlike any I have ever written. It follows a spate of revelations and recognitions through which a particular story came to be and also came to be known. First it was speculative and then it could not be denied.

I could not deny The Story … the time required this summer to fathom its mystery of events which began long before the protagonist was born, but affected her, nevertheless. The story began in 1933 and she was born in 1949 and the book focuses on the years 1975 and 2025. You must understand that these events with which her family, the Blohms, was involved began in 1933 and related to the rise of Hitler, and what developed from his regime through the end of WW II in 1945. Ultimately, the pressure of these events, long after the fact, was still so great that this lovely, young artist, Ina Andreae, committed suicide. It was and continues to be a great loss. Every suicide is more than a great death because it occurs outside of the natural order. And because it calls us to account for ourselves even though we may not have known the ones who took their own lives.

In this case – and this is why I am writing this to you now – the way the woman’s process was revealed to us, showed, indubitably, that the same process is occurring here in the U.S. at the present time. I am not the only one who is greatly fearful of its consequences. So, of course, I had to follow this wherever it was leading.

But here is the question that I would like you to consider because I am thinking about it incessantly: How did I come to this understanding of the relationship of 1933 and 2025 and why am I writing it to you now instead of waiting for the book to come out? Actually, I started to write something quite different today, but though this is only a novella, a small text, it is obsessing me. Why? Is it possible that the spirits who are very present in The Story … are introducing us to this story of this very sad young woman so that we will consider how to meet these parallel conditions in our own lives?

Well, there are enough daily revelations of human-created horrific circumstances in the daily news from the criminal famine in Gaza to the destruction of all protections for Earth, the elementals – that is earth, water, climate, air – and the essential welfare of the animals and all beings – for us to realize the extent of the disaster which is afflicting us. So I don’t think the spirits think we are ignorant and need to be made aware of the great suffering being unleashed on all of us. Why then are they so adamantly awakening us?

Is it possible, the spirits think, though we don’t see the evidence from our legislators or institutions, that there are ways we can, really can meet these situations, that there are ways of refusing and disallowing them, ways of confronting or transforming them which have not occurred to any of us yet. Yet! And so, if the spirits are calling us to consider and recognize such ways, then perhaps they are, indeed, here for the discovery.

Perhaps we review the lines I wrote above not knowing I was going to end up here, when I was considering another line of thought altogether which may appear next time I write: What we are thinking about matters more than ever before. And what develops when we are thinking together, matters very much as well.

As I write this, I suddenly think of Herman Melville’s remarkable story, Bartleby the Scrivener. After a series of circumstances which cause Bartleby to be asked to leave his place of employment where he has taken up residence, he responds, quietly and politely, but firmly, “I prefer not to.”

What, I wonder, as we are taxed with complying with increasingly Draconian policies that harm all beings, might be our collective “We prefer not to.”?