Major life news & moving ahead

For anyone who is keeping score, or focused on (nonexistent) schedules, you may have noticed that there was no Nov 15 issue. We were just getting over the fires -- making up for lost hours and depression -- when my Mom died on Nov. 13.

I'm not going to focus on that here. I had many days (like Thanksgiving) when I didn't feel like doing anything, and wondered about the wisdom of compiling dark/horror works at a time like this, but I don't the kind of horror where people die, or come up with cool new ways to kill people. I deal with the "supernatural horror" as defined by H.P.Lovecraft, where non-human forces make us ponder our very reason for being. Real world sadness, or the passing of a single life, does not change this.

Regardless of how we paint the world, or how we let the world be painted for us, we know on some level that we're walking a fine line between what is right and wrong, between creating wonders and facing our own oblivion. What is real beneath all the artificial layers of society? Things are always stirring, just out of reach. Frankly, we could all be wiped out and the outer darkness would not change -- it's just that nobody would be here to appreciate it.

The other fine line that interests me is trying to entertain, help people escape their day-to-day reality, without pushing too far with lectures or too heavy with the darkness. I don't want to dwell on "bad things." It's all just a walk in the woods. We must explore. And exploring must always teach us things, even if they are never spoken aloud.

2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #7, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.