The “small, dark light” is a Tao Te Ching thing. To be a “light that does not shine” is kind of a Tao ideal: it’s something that exists without drawing attention to itself, a plain, neutral reality like dust on a book shelf. This neat little knot of a phrase (how can a light be dark?) encapsulates the strangeness, the poetry of the Tao. The puzzle of it.

I’ve been wrestling with the Tao for the better part of a decade now and it’s endlessly fascinating to me as a guide to living a just, simple life that I find admirable. A life that feels very different from my own on most days. This newsletter is doing one of the many things that the Tao suggests: it’s a first step on a journey of a thousand miles. But where those miles will take us, I don’t really know.

In this newsletter, I plan to bring you thoughts on stuff I’m reading and watching, strips of poems, essays on politics (maybe some guest essays if people want to contribute?), dreams of a more free world, fantasies of the future, bitter self-loathing, and simple self-love. It will be a light that does not shine.

This isn’t my first time starting a newsletter. It is my first time starting a newsletter as a parent, though. It is my first time starting a newsletter as a parent in a society more or less run by people who want to eat my child alive, who are actively, wantonly chewing his (and every other child’s, every other person’s) future. It’s my first time starting a newsletter in a spirit of defiance against those monstrous people—those cruel and vicious creeps directing our world toward ruin—and in an effort to gather up the lightning strands of hope that are happening everywhere, all the time, together into a little living bouquet you can read.

I love the way rivers meander, going on their way, but in bends and turns. They do not think of “purpose,” they do not understand “goals” or dream of “efficiency,” and yet they are, all of them, the animation of water’s purpose; they will find their way to the sea by whatever means—by every means—they can.

This newsletter is a place for bends and turns on our way to the sea. For exploring topics in writing. For sharing art. For thinking in public. For being gentle with each other. For being fierce defenders of each other. For being like water, good for everything, always going to the low, loathsome places and doing what we can, doing what we do, to go where we can go.

Welcome, welcome, and welcome. I’m excited to have you with me. I’m excited to talk with you. I’m excited to take these first steps on what will be, with any luck, a long, quiet journey.