Bless you for the Patricia Sun program. I drove 730 miles to Chapel Hill from my hometown where I am caring for my dying mother, to re-visit my spiritual home, old friends and hear Patricia. During her talk, I spaced out into some meditative altered state and became aware that I was no longer “listening to a speaker,” but was receiving messages like “overhearing a family conversation.” The speaker was my sister, and so well-known to me that I could have finished her sentences. The experience was less learning than just celebration and samadhi.
I have loved THE SUN for years, bought it regularly while a GSU student in Atlanta. I am a Psychotherapist/Musician/Electronic Technician, putting on whichever face is employable at a given time. I enjoy my life, particularly those parts of it sufficiently unafraid to permit real, loving contact. This is the part of THE SUN that really makes me sing! You’re a good writer — your skill awes me a little — and you’re a good enough editor to be generally invisible. And you clearly are a courageous soul to undertake an enterprise like THE SUN for so long . . . so well . . . a miracle?
I appreciate the part of my Self that I see in you.
So you think you can keep me dangling that long about my story, then publish it without formally notifying me first, and then get off the hook by sending me a few nice words of praise? You’re absolutely right! The truth is that’s what I’m in it for.
While I’m in the mood of truthfulness, I may as well admit I thought you a cold fish after having visited you in your office more than a year ago. I was wanting to hear some praise then, too, and damned if you were going to give me any. You seemed almost defensive. I felt like an intruder, like a graduate of Bobby Jones University applying for a job at Penthouse. I imagined your mind was clicking away, “He’s not SUN people, he’s not SUN people . . .”
Another admission: I was prejudiced against you. That may have colored my judgement. J.W., your hippie dippie mailman and a friend of mine since childhood, had spoken so glowingly of you, and he’s such a bad judge of character — except, of course, in my case. But more importantly, I disliked some articles you had written. I am meaning those you wrote when it really looked like THE SUN was going to set for good. There was one especially that was so self-righteous that Richard M. Nixon could have written it. You seemed to be arguing not so much for the continued existence of THE SUN as for the vindication of Sy Safransky. And this after you had spent so much time trying to convince us that the magazine belonged to its public. Nasty. In your moment of despair, you tried to snatch it away from them.
But who am I to sit in judgement? Let him who is without registration cast the first vote. If you would pluck the mote out of your brother’s eye, you must first get a degree in optometry. So on. . . .
Well, maybe I’m not SUN people. Although I was a bona fide priest in that mystical order in San Francisco a dozen years ago, I find my religious spookiness decreases with the hairs on my head. And I prefer my medicine halfistic from a licensed physician like my father. And I get dirty thoughts every time you run a picture of Patricia Sun. (May God forgive me.)
On the other hand (if it hasn’t offended thee yet), I’m not one to lay up treasures on earth but put my faith in something simpler and, at once, grander. Every time I see the glow of lightning on the horizon at night, I think “This is it; the joke of creation is about to collapse in laughter.” My only hope is that the end doesn’t come before my thirty-fifth birthday when I’ll be the prime age, according to Bucke, for cosmic consciousnessTM. And if Patricia Sun and I should chance to meet in some romantic getaway, I swear I’d be real gentle and real organic. (May God help me.)
Regardless of my affections, I enjoy THE SUN because of its spunk. The layout and print are superior to most of the other small magazines I’ve seen. Since it gained its present form, honesty and directness have become its hallmarks. It is a joy to find my words in it.
I will continue to submit to you the best work that I feel is appropriate to THE SUN. If there is virtue in my writing, may it bless the magazine.