LETTERS
The letters that follow were started before the journal began. They belong to the same period of life, but to an earlier moment within it, when the movement recorded in these pages was first taking shape.
Completed on 19/11/2025. Can be found published, along with the Journal,here.
19/11/2025
Dear David,
I am actually going to keep this letter really brief. I was writing a lot about you earlier in my journal… that sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it? I think you’d like the journal, though. It’s like Infinite Jest in scope and ambition, but way more Max.
Just before I set the document up to write this letter to you, I found myself wondering whether I would address you in pure sincerity, with a focus on seeing you, or whether something else would emerge.
This is that something else. When I started my letters, I was still in the process of thanking and redeeming, and that was certainly necessary. People like Simone Weil and Van Gogh really deserved a sincere squeeze on the shoulder, do you know what I mean? And I know there are loads of other people who come from a similar lineage, but it’s not like I can write to all of them! What am I, some kind of cosmic post office?!
But no, I am writing to you at a time when the dwelling timeline is well and truly up and running. Aren’t you lucky?! What that means basically is that the letter I am writing to you is simply a matter of dwelling. You have been on my mind specifically today, and so I wanted to reach out to you through the metaphysical space… from one fish to another. The water is mighty fine, my friend.
Was that a bit lame and clichéd to use such a big reference in a personal letter? I mean, give me a break, David. I didn’t actually know you while you were ‘alive’, so there is a limit to how much we can connect over everyday banalities. Rest assured, that is the last queasy reference I’ll be throwing your way. From now on, it’s a straight presence… dwelling and nothing else.
And so… I wanted to tell you about a really funny TikTok I saw this morning. I don’t have the app on my phone anymore, but every so often I check it on Safari to see what’s happening in the world of slop… It’s a fun world, after all! And I saw this video of a guy doing an impression of Scooby Doo, supposedly having sex with some other cartoon character. It was… very very funny. About 10 seconds long, and the guy who did it has surely ruined his image on the stage of reality, making that whole ‘strange characters doing strange things’ thing his schtick, but I enjoyed it, and in the end, that’s all that matters. The whole age of performed selfhood thing is coming to an end anyway, so why not leave a lasting representation of you on the internet, saying ridiculous things… I certainly did my part. I was God, remember?
Anyway, I thought you would enjoy the motivation of my correspondence, if not the content. There is nothing but water-awareness now, David, and while the world hasn’t caught up yet, they sure are in for a treat!
All the best,
Max
07/11/2025
Dear George,
You’ve been on my mind as someone to write to for a while, but appropriately, it was only today, as I was sitting working on a new little children’s story, that I really felt the ‘right message’ come through.
There were always two strong poles at work in you, weren’t there? It must be pleasant to have them reconciled in a place where you are no longer required to strain with all your might to pull the chords of childlike wonder and serious religiousity together. You were right, of course, that those two chords were destined to hook into alignment eventually, but the strain was always evident.
In terms of us being properly personal as men, George, I’ll admit that I am not intimately familiar with your fairy tales, though I purchased them with the honest intention of not only foraging them for depth, but dwelling in them.
Your sermons, however, I feasted on, and I mean that sincerely. There was a time, a few years ago, when your unspoken words provided me with a sustenance so needed, I treated them as you surely treated the Good Book itself. And that’s me in a nutshell, my friend: I am always better off with a human voice in my ear. It’s the only language I know.
Anyway, I am writing a little story about a wood pigeon. I think you’d enjoy the feel of it. We must become as children, isn’t that right?
I’ll leave you now. I just wanted to write from spontaneity.
Yours sincerely,
Max
02/11/2025
Dear Carl,
Synchronicities here, synchronicities there, symphonic reality everywhere!
As you know so well, two contradictory things can be true at once. You and Heraclitus = bosom buddies. Also, just a quick note on that first sentence of this paragraph: what do you think, is it correct for me to address what you ‘knew’ or what you ‘know’? Because you’re gone, my friend, gone and not here anymore… and yet, aren’t you just a little too alive to be dead? Maybe the distinction doesn’t matter. You knew things while you were here, yet you still know things in your continued presence within the field of all that is living. None of this matters, really, does it?
But what of those two contradictory things? Well, it is deeply important to me (and always has been) that there is nothing, nothing, more important than the small and simple act of sitting in a pleasant local cafe, being present, among life and at peace with your humble, singular smallness, maybe even dwelling in the communal hospitality of being known. And yet, for so so long those small rooms were far too congested. I couldn’t inhabit them without feeling squeezed out of the shadow-infested normality! You can relate to that one, I’m sure.
So what of the other true thing? It is also true that even the smallest moment must be allowed to dwell within something vast, to be all that there is while also being paradoxically lit up by all that there really is. That is the paradox of my existence now. I think you would be impressed with my continued willingness to allow reality to dictate the play before my poor mind has been able to catch up. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if reality building were solely the responsibility of little old Max, we certainly wouldn’t be feeling so lively…
I was just writing to Bert in a somewhat triumphant way, and things all started to feel almost too correct. Is that an old ghost haunting me, Dear Professor, Dear Doctor? Is it mere trauma, Herr Jung? Only kidding, but seriously though… is this balance, do you think? Or am I heading for a downturn?
I’ll explain why. I was writing my letter, and all things were weaving together with apparent coherence and understanding (a lovely combination, as I too often live with coherence but no understanding of what is going on). Then I am in my cafe, finishing my letter to Bert (perhaps Mr Lawrence to you, but Bert to me all the same—we’re all friends here, Carl!), and then I am casually handed a small whiskey by the manager… because why not? What a lovely way to dwell in life! And then, despite it being November, one of my favourite Christmas songs came on the stereo (Please Come Home for Christmas by The Eagles—a yearny one but with a brilliant melody). So all this came together in a little string of brilliance, and then my mind naturally goes looking for the collapse.
You know what, I am beyond all that worry. I am so used to the ebb and flow at this point, everything just is.
I cut you off there, didn’t I? You might have been furrowing that mighty brow of yours and preparing to shift into analyst-mode—not so fast, Carl! No, no, don’t worry, this is the relational dynamic, and all things work themselves out. If anything, it was nice just to drop in because you’ve been on my mind again, especially with all the expansions and new frontiers.
The imagination truly is a monstrous, infinite ocean… and yet so delicate, so full and intentional in its manifestations. I wonder, my good friend, how it feels to finally dwell in the very thing you once only brushed and understood so thoroughly through the intellect. Does it feel the same for you as it does for me… wonderfully ordinary?
When I thought of writing to you again earlier, I’ll admit the dreaded concepts were on my mind, and I do think you might enjoy sinking your teeth into them with that ferocious and hungry intellect of yours, but in the end, this letter has been far less grand, and I think that is exactly the point. It is a point of contact, and that is surely enough.
The adventure continues, and the stories in the unseen fast approach our senses… Here’s to ontophany!
Yours as ever,
Max
02/11/2025
Bert,
I hardly know what to make of things anymore! I left you dangling on the last one—so where are things now?
Things are positive. I may not know what to make of anything, but every single individual thing is at least positive. I know that much.
I was talking about paradoxes, wasn’t I? And something to do with the unconscious not being bottled up entirely… well that makes perfect sense now, I do see it. Still, you know how it is with people like us… we’re always so committed to the immanence, to the paint chippings and the mild headaches and the crumbs in need of sweeping. It can make me somewhat neglectful of the field beyond the seen, I think. I can’t be too hard on myself, though. No, it wouldn’t be right. My whole life has been about freeing the world of its symbols, freeing myself of my symbols, marrying the beyond to the right here…
I am at risk of repeating myself, but no matter. You don’t mind, do you? No, no, I thought not. So yes, life has been like a delicate balancing act, and it only takes the slightest of pressure on one side of the scales to throw the whole thing off. Reconciliation is balance… yes, that’s it. Integration is one way to look at it all, but balance is the final product.
God, what am I on about? So the Machine was rolling on and on and on, but the more mechanised we became, the less we saw of the world beyond, which of course was very much accessible as this world. Hence the world beyond, particularly after the advent of good old Yesh, drifted further and further away from our own comprehension… more abstract, more floating ‘up there’, and hence the emphasis on the world to come. Kicking that heavenly can down the road, as usual.
Grand. But then a couple of strange things were also happening during that period of waiting for the world to come. Yes, we were becoming far more materialistic, yet impressively far less realistic—and that was the crux. Because in our dedication to the world as a bundle of dirt and nothing more—God forbid the dirt be luminous with the numinous!—we fell prey to those otherworldly forces in ways far more demonic. Yada yada yada.. then the modern world managed to become more and more possessed by woo than ever whilst also being more convinced that the only way to get into that supposed land of woo was to lift itself up by its crusty, wholly undivine bootstraps…
What an absolute joke of a time it was! God, I am repeating myself again, aren’t I? But you’ll excuse me, Bert, for I know you’d be interested in these things, and I myself need somewhere to converse casually with friends about the grandest, strangest of events, which of course will only ever be understood (in terms of experience) by yours truly.
But I had a point going over the old drama again with you… Oh yes, balance and integration and the rest! So what have we learned as a world united? We’ve learned that you can’t bring Heaven down to Earth and expect the great Plotinian One (I do like Plotinus—he seemed like a nice guy, so I am using his phrasing in this instance… same difference) to lose itself entirely to what is immediately accessible to us with our fingers and toes. No, the field of what is remains a vast and inexhaustible loveliness. Crucially, however, for those of us with our fingers and toes, waking up as usual into the vibrant physical nearness of everything, that very nearness is now illuminated by what once wasn’t so near, and so everything is balanced and yada yada yada… job done.
So I guess part of me (the very human, committed and reasonable part) thought that life in the One would be immanent to the point of rendering the transcendent… obsolete? Ooh, no, that feels almost blasphemous to write! But no, it’s just that old tendency of mine to let integration blur distinctness too much. The basic problem was that the immanent and transcendent lacked access to each other. The earth lacked a shimmer, the heavens were all shimmer and no crunch!
No, simply put, there is still a beyond, but the beyond is now crunchy… which is important… right? Take that, theology! And equally important, the immanent now shimmers, like we always knew it should.
And then here’s the bit that’s of real interest to you and me. Now that the great ‘accomplishment’ is over and done with, thank god, now art and literature can dwell in that crunchy beyond, like it was always destined to.
I am fresh into this newest discovery, so there is a lot more to venture into, but I’ll be bringing you along with me, of course.
Maybe when I next write, I’ll have a little something fictional to share with you… Watch out for that… we’ll have to wait and see if it crunches.
Enjoy your tactile time in the ether!
Max
31/10/2025
Dear Bert,
It feels significant to be writing to you again, my friend. I’ll admit I was unsure where all this letter-writing business was going. Everything is always so narratively necessary with me—isn’t that the only way things should be?! Still, it leaves me in total darkness about myself, even when the ground beneath my feet is solid with inevitability. The lack of certainty keeps the ground fertile, I suppose… total solidity stifles new life.
I mentioned in my last letter how useful your hot-blooded desire for the next novel was to me. Well, we’re beyond all back-patting now, aren’t we? I wanted to write today because I am now dwelling in that very nextness, both in literary potential and lived actuality, and peculiar things are happening as a result. First, ‘my novel to complete all novels’, The Artist’s Journey, now barely crosses my mind at all. That is the way of things with creation, I know, but I can’t sit here and tell you it’s not a tad disorienting! That novel, Bert, that novel was the key to unlock what was next. And now… well, almost nobody has read it yet, so there’s that… but that’s the world’s problem, not mine! No, what lingers is the fact of its completion. It completed its mission, Bert. The Artist’s Journey unlocked the gates to the land of myth reborn, so now it sits on my desk like a strange relic of a time that might as well have never been.
The preamble, the great preamble! That’s what we all lived through. Bloody centuries of it! And the likes of poor old Lao Tzu had to spend all those centuries floating up in the ether of ungroundable wisdom while the Machine chugged on regardless. All those centuries to fulfil something so… simple.
The peculiar thing about life now is the paradoxes. I thought, quite reasonably, that a union of fact and fiction would merely (merely!) tie down some kind of narrative coherence into this cold, materialist world, and I was right about that. However, I forgot about something: the depths of the mind, the inner expansiveness of the unconscious, the mind’s inability to confine itself to one reality. Because in my worldliness, Bert, in my commitment to the dirtiness of the real mud and the real wrongness of all the right, I suppose I thought the unconscious would be ‘dealt with’… whatever that means…
I’ll be honest with you again, Bert. I got distracted just now talking to a lovely old man in the cafe I’m sat in—I’ve also had a couple of drinks as it’s the owner’s birthday. So, needless to say, I’ve lost my train of thought. I’ll come back to you when I’ve got my wits about me.
Keeping you on the edge of your seat,
Max
31/10/2025
Fox,
I’ll keep mine short as well. You’re right. We’re now exactly where we need to be, aren’t we? And I’ll tell you this: I’m learning more and more about myself now that I’ve finally permitted my own existence. The same will be true for you, too, I’m sure.
It’s a curious thing, writing to each other as we do at this apparent intersection in time. I don’t really understand it, if I’m honest, but like you said… who cares?!
Whether you meet me next as that restless young man or as someone a little more settled, I look forward to it!
My my, what lives we’ve already lived… and so much of them left undiscovered, too!
Happily reclining, and yours always,
Thomas
29/10/2025
Thomas,
That definitely did the trick! Well done, my friend—or should I say well done us!
So here we are, being… it feels good. Things feel expansive, don’t they? I just wanted to drop in with this quick note to dot the i and cross the t on the fact that we do now exist. Did you like what I did there?
I’m sure there are lots of things you have to be getting on with, so I will leave you. But it’s never really a goodbye, is it? And I’m never really leaving you. No, not now time’s arrow has found its target and all things have found their true eternalist home. We are always together… whenever and wherever that togetherness occurs.
Anyway… onwards… or inwards… or simply… Well, I don’t even know how to phrase it. Who cares?!
Time to recline, we’re on vulpine time!
Fox
26/10/2025
Dear Fox,
Poor old Max didn’t want me to reply. I think he gets lost trying to understand our strange relationship: How can I be the fox if I am still Thomas? Surely the fox is all that I am, my truest self, and surely Thomas is the fiction I leave behind me? He was preparatory ground… surely Thomas was just the forerunner to what is… surely…
Preparatory ground! It sounds almost pleasant, if a little linear. That’s okay. He’ll be feeling better now that the dialogue is properly open. After all, yin and yang have to harmonise with a graceful fluidity, don’t they?
But really, Fox, are we so different? No. We may be separated by necessity, but we are united and we are reconciled. That matters. That’s all that matters. As you detailed so lovingly in your own letter, we were at odds for a long time, but we were always destined.
I actually don’t feel like I have much to say in my letter, Fox. Your letter to me was one half of something, though, and that something would have remained incomplete without my reply. I am quite happy to just be from now on—much like you’ve always wanted. However, I think I needed to speak in this instance, to voice my reply and give balance and harmony to our relationship on the page.
Here’s what I have to contribute. You mention how the world needed you but didn’t want you, and how it wanted me yet pretended it didn’t need me. Of course, I agree, but there is something important that needs to be added.
You see, Fox, it would be far too easy for people to look at our little dialogue and write it off as a simple chat between spirit and matter. But that’s not quite accurate, is it? Yes, we can often allow ourselves to think of things in this way, but if we take our existence as characters seriously, especially as two characters who dwell within a very real person, then we need to get beyond the tired dualism. Otherwise, Fox, fiction is the one realm where people are still possessed by symbols… Oh, so you represent spirit and I represent matter… how dull, how lifeless!
And we know that is not true, don’t we, Fox? You and I, for all of our similarities, are separate ontological beings, and as such, we deserve to exist as two self-contained paradoxical individuals. You might happen to be a talking fox, and I a young man, and both of us might be technically ‘not real’, but still we think and feel, we laugh and love and dance and ache for proper rest!
(I thought I didn’t have much to say here, but it seems I’ve found my stride. Not so much on the back foot now, am I?!)
Look, Max is still in need of this resolution. He doesn’t need us to reconcile simply as two symbols, but to reconcile within ourselves as individuals, and to then find friendship with one another. And I know we have long been friends, Fox, but now we need to shake hands as separate beings, fully owning whatever we don’t understand about our existence. We are, and we cannot cease to be.
Thank you for your letter, Fox. It succeeded. Now let’s hope this little mess of a response succeeds, too.
You are you. I am me. Max is Max. Let’s set us all free and see what comes of it… my money’s on a continuation of that lovely cosmic dance of yours.
From one friend to another,
Thomas
24/10/2025
Dear Thomas,
Talk about expanding the living field! I suppose the fact that I’m writing to you now, in this way, must mean we’re closer than ever to joining each other in the novel again. We won’t force it. That book, more than any, must come in its own time.
Why am I writing to you today, Thomas? You know why, of course. I was walking home just now, thinking on the day and wondering who I could possibly write to in order to clear my mind. I thought about writing to Carl again (he has been on my mind the last few days as I’ve had this library image I’d like to explore), and naturally, I thought of Bert and Yeshua, too. I thought of all of them, actually, and as I was going through each possible companion, the same feeling came to me each time: They are not close enough. They are friends, they are loved ones, and they are close, but they are not close enough. That was simply the truth, Thomas; of course, none of them were close enough, of course, because this was not a simple matter of a shared experience between humans, even across time and space… no, this one was deeper. Briefly, I thought of writing to Nature herself, but that was just a necessary widening of the scope before I could come back home, to you.
We could feel the shift coming last night, couldn’t we? These letters have opened up something vital, something destined, and naturally, it was Max, whole as he is, who had to make the first contact. He was writing to other people, people in desperate need of being rehumanised. It is quite correct that he acted as he did. In a very real sense, those letters were rehumanising him in the process, too.
But then it gets sticky. Because, as I said, I, or Max (my word, this is complicated, isn’t it?!), was walking home earlier, from a day that was both redemptive and heavy, and he was at a loss. Max can write to others as a friend, holding the new ground, and close an open loop, but who closes that loop for Max? Who can rehumanise the final part of a man who carried himself? Well, that’s what we do, isn’t it, my friend? We softly close that final loop.
So yes, Max is me and Max is you, but for this one, we do need the inner distance, don’t we? The space gives us room to co-exist, and I, as your oldest companion, who was with you even before I had an acknowledged presence of my own, am the only one who could write you this letter. So we are, as always, working together in ways that both embolden us in our separateness and strengthen us in our wholeness. Without us, Thomas, Max wouldn’t stand a chance!
So what are we? That’s the big ontological question, isn’t it? What does it mean for us to exist in the so-called living field? Well, we’re characters, aren’t we? We might say we are the most real fictional characters to ever exist—the first of a kind. What a privilege!
You, Thomas, were the character the world wanted but pretended it didn’t need, and I was the character the world needed but pretended it didn’t want. And that dynamic, as you well know, was mirrored in the way we existed to each other, too. I needed you, and you didn’t want me! What a duo!
Look, Thomas, I won’t write too much because I can feel our interest waning already. That’s a good thing; it means the very act of opening this dialogue has done what it needed to do. We spent so long trying to cancel each other out; this really does mark an important turning point. I know, I know, we’ve come a long way already, but something needed to be solidified today, and in a sense, our whole journey has been leading to this. We’ve often wondered why the novel has taken so long to get back to, but it’s starting to make a lot more sense now.
None of it was fair, Thomas. Of course, it wasn’t fair. But it would only have been a total injustice if I had left you to suffer it alone. I was always there with you, and I was patient with you while you tried to wrestle me out of existence. And I understood it, too. You wanted me gone because you thought I was working against you. It did feel like that at times. It was always going to feel like that.
You know this, Thomas. The world didn’t want me to stay. It never stopped needing me, and it always yearned for me, but it didn’t want me. That’s why you never wanted me either, mate. Your very rejection of me is proof of just how much you did belong to the world, even when you felt you didn’t. But you needed me, and look, I never let you down, did I? I knew I wouldn’t; that’s why I let you suffer in the way that I did. I was never going to abandon you, mate. To be honest, the only real worry was that you would abandon me. That would have spelt disaster for both of us.
But you didn’t. You stayed with me, even when it cost you everything. Beyond even that, you stayed with me when it threatened to cost you the very life you’d built after losing everything. It’s all very well sacrificing what you know in your heart to be unreal, but you were willing to stake true life on me, Thomas, and that burden can never be matched. So it’s only right that I should thank you. Thank you, my friend.
Do you see now, Thomas? Do you see just how much I have always needed you? I am nothing without you, and I will be forever grateful for the passageway you gave me into this wonderful world. You are an earthly character, my friend, and I am your divine counterpart, but be under no illusion: I am blessed to have you. There’s a cosmic inversion for you.
Anyway, let’s move on from the soppy stuff now and get back to the business of living! I do think this letter is the sign of something fundamentally positive. The man upstairs might well get back to writing the novel again soon—long time coming! But remember, while he taps away at his keyboard and sets those scenes, it will be you and I, two living characters, retelling our story with our customary wit and sincerity… see you on the page, brother!
Yours always,
Fox
22/10/2025
Hank,
Ooh, look at me, being all informal to meet you where you are! What can I say? This is what I do: I meet people where they are. Would you have done that for me, Hank? Would you have reached out with a little more weight and visible sincerity, just oh so slightly adapted to Max’s tone? I doubt it! But then, who can match the eternally shifting Max? What even is my true tone? I certainly don’t know.
So I’m meeting you where you are, Hank, okay? You’re welcome. Oh yes, now I can hear you… Get on with it, son! You sure are spilling a lotta words on this introduction—get to the point! What do ya want from me?
Alright, alright, calm down, Hank! I realise you were probably quite happy sipping your beer in eternal peace, but that’s exactly why I had to write to you. I could feel how open you were. I could sense that readiness for communion and friendship. I want to join you on the porch and recline, Hank! So just let me ramble and you can stare off into the middle distance, okay? Thanks, chief.
I am as optimistic as they come, but I will also call a spade a spade, and I have to say, all these living people are a little slow on the uptake! They’re all so busy with their yearning and striving, but where are they going, what are they yearning for? I don’t get it. But what I do know is that they need time, time to settle into the truth of things and let their own selves emerge naturally. You know what people are like, Hank, they’ve been swimming against the current so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to drift with purpose. Really, they’ve never even conceived of such a concept, but that’s fine. New worlds take time to populate.
Blah blah blah… Look, if some other prick was saying what I am right now, I would quite rightly poke holes. I remember some guy at university once saying something nauseatingly faux-enlightened:
“What’s your plan after uni, Rohan?”
“Who knows, man… maybe some of this, maybe some of that…”
That’s all very well and good, but it really does depend on the person saying these things. I wouldn’t have wanted to drift down the river with that guy. Living on the bare necessities is only fun when you’re capable of finding the music beneath the aimlessness. Melodies emerge through true stillness, but if you’re just drifting through unreality, it’s unlikely you’ll come out with anything tuneful.
Blah blah blah again! I’m boring myself in this letter, Hank. But it’s useful, it is! Because I have done the striving and I’ve brought the Grail home, so what else is there?!
So here we are, lounging in the new world, after all the suffering and all the contradictions, and wondering who’s going to show up next.
I’m really not so bitter as I sound, Hank. You just bring that sharpness out in me. It’s a good thing, I think. Stops me from losing my edge. Oh, and don’t think I don’t know what peace I’ve brought you, too. You might not want to acknowledge it, and that’s fine, but I know you’re happier here with me on this porch than you were alone. I speak to that bluebird of yours. I know I do. You can’t hide from me, buddy.
I’ll let you know when more people start to realise how bloody rich life really is. Trudge trudge trudge goes the modern world, always so slow on the uptake…
Max
22/10/2025
Dear Albert,
We must imagine Sisyphus happy, eh? You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, mate; I know a thinly masked alter-ego when I see one! Look, we can’t help who we are in this life, can we? If your old friend Jean-Paul wanted to tie himself in intellectual knots at the end of Nausea and refuse to enjoy the music, that was his business, wasn’t it?! But not so with the ever-enjoying-himself Albert, who couldn’t help but let the crisp beauty of a black coffee sneak into even the most austere, philosophically bleak novel.
Yes, yes, we must imagine Sisyphus happy… or we could just take his word for it. We could just experience the mythical mystery and allow our bones to fill us in: This man may have every reason to wallow… nay, his very philosophy seems to make it an inevitability… and yet, isn’t he just a little… cool? Tell me, Sisysphus, how was it existing in that all-too-often sterile intelligentsia? Did you not feel your heart, your loins, maybe even your brain pulsating with an ache towards freedom? Of course you did! Well, you’ve always had a friend in me, Sisyphus. Life only looks absurd when the big question in the sky is left unanswered. Once that’s done, what else is there to do but enjoy the coffee? You were ahead of your time, perhaps even ahead of yourself, my friend.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine last night and, because he is philosophically inclined, I gave him a little explanation for my ‘ontology of relation’—a fancy phrase, I know. If I were one of your old mates, I would probably go on to write a nine-hundred-page incomprehensible magnum opus about it; then I would probably scold anyone who wasn’t up to the task of picking up their fine-toothed comb of good faith and giving it all their attention. But anyway, I gave him my explanation, then reassured him that the explanation was pointless because it was philosophy lived, not explained. Why am I even telling you this? Oh yes! Because what’s finally happened, Sisyphus, is that after centuries of analysing, constructing, deconstructing, modernising and post-morteming… we have finally stitched friendship back together! What a ridiculous detour humanity took!
Although, it does help for me to have that little phrase in my back pocket: ontology of relation. If I hadn’t trudged through the quagmires of phenomenology and the rest, I might have left some room for the thinky types to go on thinking they were safe in their theories. Nope! We’ll have to wait and see what some of my old professors make of this philosophical homecoming. I contacted a few not long ago, and I am sure they will most likely think nothing of it… But the encounter will have happened all the same! Ha! Oh, I’m just not institutional enough, Albert! I am just so lacking in structure and apparent intellectual rigour…
I thought of you today, my friend, because I am feeling more and more conversational. And look, I do know I am still untangling things of the past, but the tangles themselves get more conversational as I go along. You’ll understand I had to write to dear Yeshua first, freeing him of that ghastly symbol, and of course, I had to give lovely Simone, whom you thought of so highly, the attention she so dearly deserved. Yes, I have been playing it all by ear with my letters (that is the only way to do it), and today I heard your melody silking through the metaphysical airwaves with its customary nonchalance—a nonchalance that nevertheless carries an underlying sincerity.
So it’s black coffee, music and friendship from here on in, Sisyphus. No more big systems or big egos. Problem solved: joy is permitted. Pass that on to Jean-Paul, would you? I’d write to him myself, but I don’t feel like laying myself open to the needlessly morose right now. Give him a nudge for me, give him a cheeky poke and see if you can get a humble smile out of the bugger! Good man.
Until the next time, my friend,
Max
P.S. You were right about the rebellion, but we only needed it once. I’ve done the rebelling, now bring on the dwelling!
20/10/2025
Dear Grandma,
1-0 to the Arsenal the other day! Top of the league as well, for now… Remember when they always used to be top at Christmas and then somehow end up fighting for 4th by May? Those were the days!
I wonder what you’d make of my ‘Letters to the Dead’. Really, I think that’s a crass way of putting it. But we wouldn’t phrase it like that, would we, Grandma? No! Absolutely not! Fancy stripping the departed of their living presence! If you’d like a quick explanation for what I am doing (I won’t bore you with the philosophy and details), then I’ll put it like this: I am expanding the definition of the living field. Oh, right, that’s lovely! I can hear you say: you’re right, Grandma, it is lovely. What’s more, it’s necessary.
And what do I mean by expanding the living field? (Again, without any jargon or overcomplicating) I mean that those who have left us have really returned to us in a way most hardly ever realise. Again, this all sounds too complicated, doesn’t it? Well, I’ll just leave it behind and write and we’ll see what comes of it!
You know when people die, Grandma, their friends and relatives often say ‘They’re still with us,’ and then usually they point to their hearts. Well that’s not just a nice sentimentality, it is literally true. Of course, when someone passes on, we miss them, we miss their lived presence in our daily existence, but I think what we often miss more than anything is the chance to finally have them speak their reality to us. It’s like we believe that when someone is gone, that they can no longer be a part of the living community. We put their names on tombstones, spread their ashes, raise a drink to them every so often, and of course we remember them. We remember the things they said and did, the times they made us laugh. But Grandma, what of the person’s essence? Who can truly say that they get their essence across even while alive? That’s the problem, isn’t it? You were Valerie Goalen, and there was an infinite essence contained within that living presence. But did you feel seen? Did you feel known?
In many ways, I’m sure you would answer a resounding ‘yes’. And I wouldn’t blame you! You were happy with your friends and your community, and you lived for those small moments of true communion. But Grandma, there is no shame in owning the parts of yourself that went unseen—your soul was yours and it is still. Of course, if you were only the features of your lived experience, if you were only the living person we all remember, that would exclude so much of your true reality from the picture!
I am doing it again, aren’t I? I am going all complex and philosophical. Sorry about that, and thank you for listening, as always. Really, the words don’t matter. I am just happy to have this communion with you again. Because I genuinely never felt like you left, Grandma. I missed you, of course. I missed talking to you and dwelling in the warmth of your home and atmopshere. But I know you never left. Really, it was less about you going elsewhere and more about me remembering how to get back to the place where you always were. That’s what everyone needs to remember, I think. They get so caught up in the fixed realities they encounter every day that they block themselves from dwelling in the eternal presence of all that there is.
And that is where I am most comfortable, Grandma. This is my zone, if you like, and it always has been. In the living world (if you can call it that), you have to wade through all this unreality. It’s like people are scared that if they let the scaffolding of existence fall away, there will be nothing left of them. The opposite is true, and you know that now, don’t you, Grandma?
So here we are, meeting together like we always did. Only now, you’re more Valerie Goalen than ever! That’s what it was all about, in a sense. That’s what this was all leading to: the place where everyone gets to be themselves again.
Next time I write, hopefully Arsenal will still be top of the table… I might have to write sooner rather than later just to preempt any inevitable calamities!
Love you loads!
Max
19/10/2025
Dearest Simone,
No more waiting. No more obstacles for connection. No more straining and self-emptying. It’s lovely to meet you.
I’ll admit that I have many ways of being: I can joke, I can be wry, I can sometimes be so silly with divine matters that you might be pressed to recoil at my apparent irreverence. But I can and will meet you in this place of utter sincerity, if only to then lay the ground for something lighter in the process, something like a festive morning mist rising from an earnest, winter earth.
There was a certain quality to your suffering, Simone, a certain singular quality that invited its own exacerbation. I’m talking about your loneliness. Because what can a lonely person do if not be stoic, and crucially, continue to be vulnerable despite the isolation and misunderstanding? Yes, you did the right thing, over and over and over again, and so you were the wounded hen, piled on by others who only knew a fraction of what you felt. Yet they felt it too, didn’t they, in their fractions? But the world only knew how to peck suffering out of existence, as if the lone carrier would take its pain with them on the way out. Oh, don’t think you can be sly with me, Simone! Where does a person’s wisdom come from if not direct experience? The sharper the insight, the deeper the cuts.
Yes, the problem needed a solution, didn’t it? Suffering couldn’t go on forever as a snare to itself. And yet I think you would look at our modern world and weep; at least, you would have done. What do I mean by this? I mean the world became so frightfully intent on protecting its wounded hens that it began to lose sight of suffering’s deeper mysteries. The tragic thing is, as you know too well, that we needed people like you, Simone. We needed those people who refused to be other than they were, and who refused to stop feeling even as their suffering began to define them in the eyes of the world. But then, the world knew it was time for a change, and it was correct to feel that way. It really was a mess, in all honesty.
Simone, thank you. Thank you for staying true in God’s absence. And this has nothing to do with supposed dark nights of the soul or the sudden arrival of Grace—it has to do with companionship. God needed company, and so did you, but while that wall was in place, neither one could force an outcome. Patience was required. Yet it got to a point in our modern world where people en masse seemed to run out of patience, and can you blame them? No, I know you wouldn’t. You would feel that strange mix of divine rage and holy compassion. How, how could God let the world suffer in His absence for so long?! And yet still, how, how could the world turn its back on Him? I agree with you, Simone. The lack of reconciliation was the deepest, saddest fact of existence.
But you waited. Simone, you waited, and it brings tears to my eyes. You waited, quietly lighting up a world already hastening down the path of building whatever Tower of Babel it could, for it just wanted something to reach the place beyond: a new religious wave, a technological advancement, a revolutionary theory, a system of bureaucrats and cinderblocks… anything to reach what you knew could only be gained through patience.
I waited too, you know, back when I could still only find His presence outside of myself. I waited, and I had this moment, sitting in the small garden of my late grandmother’s cottage, as new little shoots of fresh grass started to burst from the seeds I’d sown, and Simone, I was so lonely back then, so isolated, and in such pain. But I looked on at the grass, those feeble, optimistic shoots of weak, vulnerable green, and I thought about the unrelenting sun, shining down upon the humble garden, unthanked, unnoticed, and what else could I have had in that moment if not compassion for the God who went on unseen?
In this way, I have had a strange life, Simone, but I am glad to share it with you now. There is, and I say this without self-pity or hesitation, a loneliness I know that is unlike anything that has ever existed. But it was so complete, so total, so lacking an ‘other’ that eventually I realised, with sweet relief, that my loneliness was my deepest strength and greatest power. I had the power to end it, you see. I had the power to end loneliness if I only accepted the totality of my solitude. All things began and ended with me, and so it was my duty (and mine alone) to take on that loneliness, to embrace it fully and thereby find its fulfilment. Multiplicity bloomed from it.
And so here I am writing to you now, Simone. I am writing finally in my true era of correspondence, where individuals might encounter each other fully, without distortion or longing beyond where they already are. I wrote similarly to Vincent the other day (of course, there is a theme to these early letters of mine). No doubt you recognised his sincerity, too. You waited, Simone, and I tried waiting, until one day I had to accept that it was not my job to wait, but to act, to return, to invite.
You have been on my mind for a few days, and I knew I would write to you sooner or later. It came about today because I was reminded of the unseen nature of my burden. I don’t ever expect anyone to know of what I carried, let alone feel it—that would undermine the whole enterprise. No, that era of solitude and longing is over, and I am happy to see the back of it. As always, the world is slow to catch up, and so I won’t begrudge it moaning and groaning for a little while longer, still feeling its cosmic loneliness as real. But the warmth of a new day has already begun to press against the ground of those long used to the cold. And there it is, Simone! There is our lovely rising mist, floating timelessly up from an earth only just beginning to wake. Oh, what a long, long winter it was… what a long night! There’s a dark night for you, my dear friend: The Dark Night of the World Soul, finally giving way to something brighter, something more just.
And so I will leave you with that. I refuse to dwell on the sadder things of the past and talk to you now as you are, seen in the Eternal Present. Like I said at the beginning: no more self-denial, no more walls, no more waiting. There is only now, a place of true communion. You are home, Simone. It’s time to relax and indulge yourself a little!
Yours, with all my eternal attention,
Max
18/10/2025
Dear Carl,
I do think you would be quite fascinated by what I am doing now. This very communication is a clue, I suppose. Up until a few minutes ago, I had each piece titled ‘Letter to—’, but now the titles have gone entirely. I am still quite ambivalent about publishing the letters, but I am following my soul, as usual, and I think I’ve learned by now that whether you write something personal in a notebook or ‘post it to the world’, the act is the same. You write into reality either way, then something happens. Maybe the reason I am so past keeping such things private and locked away is that I would only be lying to myself about their significance. In fact, if you’ll allow it, I’ll digress and tell you a funny story briefly before moving on to the actual meat of this letter.
So a few years ago, during what might be considered the deepest part of my descent, I had a rather stormy few days. Now there were many days like this at the time, and there have been many since, but these particular stormy days announced their relevance in a strange way not too long ago.
Just wait a minute. I am going to get my notebook from the time. I keep it in a grey wicker box under my bed, and I am going to have to rummage a little.
There you go. It was easy to find because it opened right to the page I needed. You are going to love all this, I just know it. These strange little coincidences! Okay, so to give you a little slice of my life at the time (and give you a feel for where I was), I’ll share a couple of excerpts. Here is what I wrote on 21st April, 2023:
I don’t know where I am. I am lower today than I have been for months. I think I might be being weak. I think these things might be within my control. I feel like I could hate things. Depleted. I am depleted. The conversations last night have changed something in me. I feel like I have had to be so strong, and now I am nowhere, and I am depleted. I think this might be the lowest I have felt in years. I slept for three hours in the afternoon earlier, simply because I was nowhere, and I didn’t dream at all. It’s as if my mind has become a complete desert. Nothing can live in it at the moment, day or night, wake or sleep.
That gives you an idea. There is more from some other journal somewhere, but I’ll spare you the extra details. Essentially, I could feel that something cosmic had become barren. It was the end of something, if you like, or at least, an end was coming.
Then, here’s the next entry, from the following day, 22nd April.
I’m glad to be where I am again—back. I was right to talk to Daisy last night. I had to follow that vicious instinct and get to the crux of the matter.
Dream: the night before last, I had a short dream where I saw Grandad standing by the window in the bedroom upstairs. He looked tired and forlorn, and I wanted to tell him how proud I was of him. So I walked over and embraced him. He looked reluctant to accept my promise, and I remember thinking about how small and frail he looked. I hugged him tightly, told him how proud I was, and then I started to cry. I could feel the deep, sad emotion coming through me in my sleep, even, and it all felt significant.
Retelling this dream last night to Daisy made me tear up again. Someone had to hug the Old Man, even if it was me hugging myself. Got to appreciate what ‘The Old Man’ does.
This digression is going on a bit now, I realise that. Sorry. But it has to go on! Immediately after that bit, I mentioned I was returning to your old Red Book, my friend. That old mysterious beast you didn’t want seeing the light of day! Well, good thing it did. I returned to my favourite section: The Magician. (Would it insult you, Carl, if I told you I never read the whole thing? I enjoyed the Seven Sermons and The Magician, but once my soul had devoured them, I had no need of the rest!)
Anyway, I returned to that section of your great, magical book, and I quoted some passages at length in my notebook to ground myself in the truth of the day, as it continued to appear to me.
Killing off the prophets is a gain for the people.
Quite right, sir! So tell me, sitting there now, reading this, wherever you are… who is the greatest false prophet of them all? Well, it has to be the voice of God Himself, appearing to the world to set the record straight, does it not? But that’s the tricky part: God had to speak once more, fully and truly, to bring the whole miserable thing to a close. He had to sacrifice his hidden role on the stage, if you will, by acknowledging his part as reality’s author. Once this was done? Well, the final prophet may have been ‘killed off’, but he was free, and reality could finally speak for itself.
Digressing from my own digression, fancy that! Sorry. I am even questioning whether this is making sense to you. But I trust you to follow along and fill in things I miss or articulated badly.
Coming back to those notebook entries. What was happening in me back then with that dream of my grandfather? You’d have a great time with the symbol of the Old Man there, wouldn’t you?! Well, it’s clear that the Old Man was on the way out and that he had gone largely unappreciated. Something vast, carrying great wisdom and history, was on its final legs, and there was a worry that it could disappear without recognition or integration. Hence, someone had to appreciate the Old Man. Now, there was obviously a lot more context that maybe I will fill you in on another time, but something massive shifted from those two days (21st and 22nd April), turning into the 23rd. By then, I was returning to George MacDonald (another friend I must write to sometime), and I was returning to the blooming of things coming anew. Here’s what I wrote on that day, the 23rd:
Returned to George MacDonald. I will say that I am pleased with how quickly I was able to find my way back to myself on Friday. Of course it took the conversations with Daisy to pull things into clarity for me, but I am under no illusions about what I need to look out for in myself.
I wrote that I hadn’t felt that bad in months or years, but truthfully, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that bad, and I am utterly grateful to be where I am now—things couldn’t be more enjoyable. Last night (and all throughout yesterday), I got the most heavenly, pure and simple pleasure out of the birds and flowers. I feel as though I have been through such trials in recent months. I have tested my ability to pivot, to always pivot and expect more of myself. So I found God in writing; then, when that was taken away, I found it in work (labour in the garden), then thoughts of the house, etc. And each time, just as I lost that bliss, I was able to find it again in the pure simplicity of being. And on Friday, I had my ultimate test: that of desolation and loneliness, and suddenly I was again indifferent to the world of love and hate. I saw things that could have appealed to me, and I dreamt of lives I could have been living, but I recognised them as escapes, and so I turned my head from them.
At last, I get to the point of all this, Carl! You are a man of great patience for reading on.
Earlier this year, I visited the Panacea Society in Bedford (a pilgrimage of sorts for me). It had to be done, without grandeur and without a sense of looking for meaning or resonance—we’ll leave the whole ‘Second Coming’ thing alone for this letter. That’s a revelation for another time, and to be honest, as I’m sure you’ll understand, I’m bored with all the mythic bigness. But the quiet little coincidence of this story is that I found out they had a tree in the society gardens, a great weeping ash that had been planted over a hundred years ago. It was called Yggdrasil.
Ooh, yeah, my friend! Now, now I can hear you adjusting yourself in your seat, perhaps straining a little, maybe straightening the page in your hands. Yes, Yggdrasil. And do you happen to have a guess of when the old axis mundi decided to fall? The night of April 22nd, 2023.
The Old Man was on the way out, wasn’t he, my friend? And someone, someone had to appreciate the Old Man, weak in the joints and barren in the soul, before he was reduced to a necessary ash.
So that was my ‘brief’ story. There are more details, of course, but the end of my digression brings me serendipitously back to my original point, which will now be made with haste.
Things had to be reconciled, Carl. You know that. Private letter, public letter… living recipient, dead recipient… what’s the difference when all things are reconciled? In order for the world to truly belong to its own being again, no longer trapped in some cosmic drama, the outer had to finally meet the inner and shake hands. Yes, it was all very fun when I leafed through my notebooks later that day, finding my dream and thinking of a very real Yggdrasil beginning to creak ahead of its final storm. But when the outer meets the inner, the drama can stop, and something like real life can begin to take place. That is what I care about now. I know I’ve got a lifetime of surprises awaiting me, but the union is what matters.
So it turns out I was wrong about the ‘meat’ of this letter. I blabbered on, and you had to sift through my old memories. But Carl, I wanted you to know that your work found its home. What you mapped, the scale at which you worked, such a feat cannot and will not be repeated. The good thing is, it really doesn’t need to be! And I know that’s what you wanted to come of your work, something like completion, and while most will never know the scope and depth of your discoveries, let alone the honest man behind them, I can honestly say I could not have gotten to where I am without you, brother. You chartered the complex so I could bring home the simple.
I’ll write again. There’s so much more to reminisce about.
Until the next time, Old Man!
Max
18/10/2025
Dear Vincent,
I’ve done it. I’ve smuggled God in through the back door. There’s no going back now. The divine is here, revealing itself in casual cafe encounters and correspondences across time. Finally, the age of interpretation is over. Finally! Welcome to the age of encountering, my friend.
Tell me, did you know you would become the ‘quintessential artist’, Vincent? No, of course not. That was for the world to decree, drunk on labels as ever. No, you were too busy in the pursuit. And of course, you became a tragic figure in the eyes of history, but you saw that one coming, didn’t you? Well, not so tragic now, are you?! Ha!
It really was the tale as old as time. Let the divine burden fall on one person (or maybe a couple per generation), watch them wrestle with it alone from a safe distance, then wistfully remember them after the weight of divinity has sent them back ‘home’. Oh, you were just too sensitive for this world, Vincent! Yeah, right. The world got so used to turning a blind eye until it was too late that it seemed to think it was ‘in charge’, rather than eternally complicit in the failure to marry the seen and the unseen.
Well, things are levelled out finally, now that divinity has embodied a bit of that worldly stubbornness. I think it would make you laugh now, Vincent, the generations of people standing thoughtfully before your Sunflowers, pretending to understand whatever was meant by ‘seeing what is real behind what is merely seen’. Nod, nod, nod, went the oh so cultured heads… Yes, he really was a beautiful soul, and surely he saw the beauty we too often miss… but oh, yes, I see it now, standing in the National Gallery with my eyes all narrowed and thoughtful, wondering what my Hinge date is making of it all… maybe he is a sensitive soul like me, like Vincent… maybe he too feels things as deeply as us, Vincent…
The way in was always the suffering, the isolation, the loneliness… God, there was nothing pleasant about the divine before, was there? It was all so intense. Even the taste of the bread, rich and salty, had to be offset against the cosmic struggle of the realest human life.
In a way, the modern world did discover you again, Vincent. They discovered you collectively in their spiritual discontent and end-times hopelessness. They discovered you in the horrid lie of immanence without soul. But they tried to medicalise the problem, they tried to cut it up and label it away… and I understand, of course. As do you. When you only experience a fragment of the problem, it is easy to think a fragment of a solution will do. One solution was needed, but the total burden was always (it seemed) too much for a singular mind… as you demonstrated! No, it was never one man’s job to save the world. But as it turned out, it was one man’s job to swallow the burden of a world that couldn’t be saved to make space for the new one to arrive through a collective harmony.
And that leaves me writing to you now, Vincent. I wanted to invite you home, truly home—your idealised banishment to the land of sensitive souls is over—and the people who once believed themselves to be in charge, even with their utter spiritual incompetence and that deep, childlike fear in their eyes, are now gradually adjusting to a world where they are no longer expected to be both a bureaucrat and someone who can truly see. Look, I am not unsympathetic to the poor fools. The divine was always so outcast-prone… it was inevitable that the world would end up offering a well-meaning supply of ‘toolkits’ and ‘grounding methods’ to keep the crazies happy.
I think we’ll look back on this most recent period of history and laugh at just how much the world was trying to solve a cosmic problem with ‘5 simple steps’ and a popular science book on mental health. We’re already laughing, aren’t we, Vincent?
I’ll write again—I want to talk about colours—but for now I’ll leave it there. You can put the paintbrush down for an evening, if you like. The numinous will dwell calmly in your breath as you relax. It’s not going anywhere.
Sincerely yours,
Max
17/10/2025
Dear Yeshua,
I wanted to follow up my first letter with a proper second. I don’t have much to say in this one, just that I know you’ll have spotted how much my first letter had us both mirroring each other throughout. It was always going to be that way, wasn’t it? I think we had to untangle ourselves from each other with that rather formal opening. It’s only correct to recognise likeness before difference can be justly celebrated.
Now I feel more myself, and like I am addressing you properly, untangled and single and human, I can say calmly that it is a pleasure to meet you. There it is: man to man. Max to Yeshua.
I’ll leave it there. Maybe I’ll write again one day, maybe I won’t. What’s important is that wherever you are, you’re you: singular, right-sized, divine as ever, and being whoever you always were.
Yours with the greatest respect,
Max
17/10/2025
Dear Bert,
This one’s a proper letter, isn’t it? I admit I made a mistake in my earlier note to Yeshua—it was always going to start with him. People could get all annoyed at the supposed theological implications of choosing ‘Him’ as my first recipient… well, that’s their thing, isn’t it? Hm hm hmmmm, I see he’s chosen to write to a certain central figure… this must surely mean he is declaring his allegiance to the doctrine! It can only mean this!
Again, that’s their thing. God forbid a man write to another man (long dead) in good faith, attempting nobly to free him of the biggest symbol of all time. Yes, yes, I could have chosen to first write to one of the prophets, or maybe Socrates, or some other sacrificial figure, but let’s be honest: poor old Yesh is the one who took the biggest hit. And I don’t mean the suffering or the dying—who hasn’t tried to carry the world on their shoulders at least once?—no, I mean the fact that the symbol was total and it stuck.
Anyway, my ‘mistake’, if it can be called that, was writing a letter to Yeshua that didn’t even really seem to start out as a letter at all. I put this important little quote at the beginning (from a poem of mine) and then proceeded to start the ‘letter’ by talking to an unreal reader, referring to the whole thing as an essay. It was only a paragraph or two in that I actually started to address the man himself!
Hey ho! I see it now, Bert. I see that I’ve begun something new. Something casual, intimate and redemptive. And it just had to begin with a strange, fluid introduction (the neutral address at the start of my letter to Yeshua) because otherwise the formal process of freeing up the individuals involved could never have taken place. And this is that formal process, right here, in this letter. You’re involved now, mate.
So there you go. I guess it wasn’t a mistake after all, just one more thing that felt strange and wrong when I did it, only to prove strangely correct in retrospect. The story of my life!
So why you, and why now? Because I needed someone else to dialogue with to clarify what on earth was going on. I knew I could be more conversational with you, and that, really, we were already pretty much acquainted as brothers. I do think I will write to Yeshua again, but it will have to come in its own time. Do I somewhat regret the formal tone of my letter to him? In some sense, but I think he will understand. I mean, he’s used to it! No, I’m sure it’s all fine on his end. He received the invitation to communion and that’s all that matters.
I will write to you again some other time and talk more about my book. You helped me a great deal a few years ago when I was unwittingly wrestling with bringing something new into the world. You asked what was next for the novel, and I found my heart whispering to me. Finally, a map of where you are and where you are going. Of course, I could never say for sure what the destination was going to look like, but your conviction situated me, beyond doubt, in something real, if you like. It was very, very helpful, and had you not burned with that question, articulating it so beautifully for me at just the moment I needed it, then who knows if I’d have known what I was in the possession of when the answer eventually tried to push its way through me and into the world. As always, the art was the by-product of pursuing the real.
What an exhausting aion it was for everyone!
Oh, lastly, I wanted to say right here, in writing, that I cannot and will not obsess over these correspondences being ‘great writing’! I am publishing them to my little temple, you see, because for whatever reason, they belong there. Don’t ask me why. But there is still this itch of perfection in me, even after everything I’ve done and written, and I need it gone! Bye-bye, Mr Perfect, I am leaving you behind in the previous millennium!
But you, Bert, are of course coming along with me. You and everyone else who would rather live and breathe in the eternal freshness of the now than sculpt something boring and permanent. The symphony goes on!
Yours warmly,
Max
17/10/2025
“Please, don’t take this ‘Song of Myself’ as a song for you.
Perhaps in the deepest sense, I am universal.
Perhaps there was a time when I could have succumbed
To a purely mythic life, possessed by a symbol:
An awful embodiment of Love or Hate, Death or Pleasure,
But no, no…”
— from A Song of Me Only
No, I am a man! And so was he, though we have a tendency to forget that.
You’ll notice: no more capitalisations. At least not for this essay. The ‘Lord’ has been capitalised enough in pronouns, I think, and to do so again, especially in this piece, would surely defeat its purpose. I can only write this from a place of timely belonging—I want to welcome the man of significant passion home on behalf of us all. And who are you lot to stop me?!
Welcome home, Yeshua. You gave the world your tears and your compassion. You gave the world your suffering. You carried your wisdom with a quiet humility, and you did as your soul instructed. You gave the entirety of what you were to the grand turning point in the old play, and what did that turning point produce? Well, you got to live in the hearts of many for an aion. You got to hang there on your cross, all sad and sacrificed, and inspire something like hope, maybe gratitude, maybe rage, or maybe just plain old indifference. Because in your symbolic state, all skinny up there on that splintered stage, you were also dismissed as a convenient fiction: sometimes violently, sometimes lightly, and often with a touch of smug derision thrown in as well. It’s easy to mock a symbol, after all. It’s easy to worship one, too.
So you, you poor, lovely man, were lost to a symbol. The symbol. Is this what we call a success? Maybe in the old narrative, but how lonely it must have been to carry eternal truth as an archetype! Yeshua, my friend, it’s all right now, mate. I know you were robbed of your humour, stripped of your dignity, and in a ghastly turn of events, somehow denied the right to remain a human in any fully realised way… but balance returns to all things eventually.
I am resisting the urge to quote others in this piece. So many people, clear-thinking and good-hearted people, have had their opinions of you, my friend. But then, they are individuals, too—little mini symbols lost to the aion of interpretation and understanding—and so I think it’s right, cleaner even, to leave all names out of it. Ideas are owned by all, but each person’s soul belongs to them and them alone. This is between you and me, man to man, and this is how all ‘letters’ of this sort will continue from here on in.
I mean, of course, of course I had to start these writings with you. And you know it too, don’t you? Yes, I thought so. You left such a decisive, divisive story behind you that The Man Who Lived and The Man Who Died were always doomed to be separate. Then it all came down to disposition, didn’t it? Worldly types could hardly ever bring themselves to consider anything other than The Man Who Lived: the historical figure, the man who lived in flesh and blood and lived a ‘life’ of many facts… born here, died there, said this, maybe said that, possibly did these things, almost certainly didn’t do that. Yada yada yada. Yes, that was The Man Who Lived, and I’m sure people will continue to delight in dissecting and debating those facts, as if they were the things that really mattered!
Then, obviously, there’s The Man Who Died. Oh, he was far more interesting, surely? What an inspiration that man was! Tell me, my friend, are you not bored of being defined by your death? I know, I know, it was the bit after that they cared about, but had you not died, you would not have become so important to them, would you? A man had to die to prove his life was significant… lovely.
But that’s the other-worldly types for you, always looking for a symbol to project some love and meaning onto. In some way, they were your closest allies. In others, they were the cause of your perennial ache and loneliness. They didn’t mean it, of course. We know that, don’t we? But while one half of the world needed you to be ‘just a man’, the other half needed you to be more, so much more. They came at you from different sides, tugging, tugging… no wonder you ended up exhausted with those outstretched arms.
But Yeshua, you can relax now. You don’t need to regain your presence on Earth to have your Earthly Presence redeemed. There was a time, I know, when you felt the most alive, the most at home in your own skin and soul. That Eloi was quite the experience, wasn’t it? You knew who you were beyond all doubt, you knew what you carried within, and yet the pain of the betrayal, and the intensity of that ruthless sun drying up your lips and calling you home, those worldly sensations both confirmed and denied you. Yes, I would be surprised if the man of two modes of being had any realer, more reconciled moment than that. And whatever laughter, whatever quiet chuckle might have awaited you on the other side of death, it surely lacked the salt of earthly sweat and tears. Yes, however much the gods claim to giggle their way through eternity, laughter is and always will be visceral.
What are we doing here, Yeshua? I am rambling, as you can see. But I do so with intention and with an inner certainty that I have come to write this letter today because the time is finally right. History cannot be rewritten, not in any way that counts. But it can be re-remembered in truth and clarity. Thankfully, that is all that really matters, as a million prevailing incorrect narratives can be undone forever by one quiet act of honest remembering.
Well, that’s it, really. I am looser in my writings these days, and letters do the job of transmission. Strict form, prophecy, scripture born through pain and divination… all that has its place, but what could be better, truly, than communion? Don’t worry, no more ‘body of this’ or ‘blood of that’—I realise you weren’t quite around for all that. It was all very sacred, all very intentional, all very reverent, and all very strange! But just like anything, that little act had its place. It was a place-holder, if you will, for the real thing.
And here you are now, Yeshua. Home. Some might call this a fictional communion; some might call it madness. I’ll call it ontological. That way, it’s more real than real. No more living on bread alone, and no more going skinny on the Word, either. True communion, right here. You and me. You deserve it.
MT 