I’ve been touched by the letters I’ve received about my absence from The Sun.
For those who didn’t read between the lines a few months ago, when I questioned whether I’d continue appearing in every issue, let me say, plainly, that I won’t. My writing will appear, but irregularly — at least for a while.
Involved as I am in The Sun — in the selection of what we print, in the editing and in the layout, in the numerous decisions that shape the magazine — it’s impossible, I suppose, for me not to be in an issue, even if my own words don’t appear. Yet, within this family of voices, I’ve always been at the head of the table, my presence expected, familiar.
I’ve wanted to be there not just by virtue of being the editor but because I had something to say — something that might join us for a moment in that miraculous way words can. The sorrows and joys I write about are uniquely mine and — if I write well — yours, too. In sitting down at the typewriter, in parting the veil of my seeming separateness, I’m reminded I’m not alone; perhaps you’re reminded of that as well.
Yet writing for a monthly deadline no longer seems like the best way to satisfy that wish. I want my work to be more thoughtful, better crafted. I want to reach beyond the metaphors that have become too familiar to me, too easy — and thus sentimentalized and limiting. If this sounds vague, that’s because it is. Yet sometimes uncertainty itself beckons. I need to honor the summons, or risk being untrue to myself — which is hardly the message I want to bring.
— Sy
