The squat pen rests, snug as a gun

Charles Taylor, via the estimable Donny: We are deeply moved, but also puzzled and shaken. We struggle to articulate what we’ve been through. If we succeed in formulating it, however partially, we feel a release, as though the power of the experience was increased by having been focussed, articulated, and hence let fully be. This is a needed articulation of an experience I’ve struggled to understand. Occasionally when writing something, especially when it’s deeply important to me, I have felt something like that emotional release. It’s as if I couldn’t fully feel what (I discovered later) needed to be felt until completing the writing. As if the experience was not complete until it was articulated. That release has, in fact, come to signal to me that my task has been completed, for that moment at least. I do not mean to imply that the writing was in any way exceptional, or even good; I only mean that it completed the work at hand. Maybe this is related to the–not unique to…