FALL 2021 | Volume 4, Issue 1

My son, Simon Patrick Reynolds, was born at 3:03 in the afternoon on the fourth of November, 2021. Hemingway would probably end the essay right here, and in fact all great writers probably should—having stumbled upon a direct object so singularly profound, inherently depictive, and diversely applied that any adjectival phrase only demeans the depth of the tangible thing. There is a poetic elegance in the silence of shared knowing that is so transformative it radiates an observable kind of influence to even those who don’t know. And even someone as absurd as me won’t try and tackle fatherhood in an editor’s essay, especially when there are plenty of good Cat Stevens records to listen to on the subject.

Instead, I’ll simply tell you that I love him, and you’ll get it. We who live in this place together, this house of ideas; we grasp it. It is a calamitous love. And calamity is the only way to live.

Instantly I was confronted by those paradoxical waves—excited for milestones and moments to come, while being terrified about how old I would be when they arrived—covetous of this time together and egotistically paranoid about the parts of my own life that I was neglecting, that I was “losing.” But that’s all trash; we live too much on the balance sheet, negotiating with time, negotiating with sacrifice. And we; those of us who live in this place together, should really know better. We should only ever be on about things that live outside epochs and trade-offs and timelines—things about joy, achievement, sport, art, Trinity College Dublin, love and melancholy. We’ve all grown too weary and too practical and aware of sacrifices in the last two years, and I guess history will tell us if our excuses for that were good enough, but let’s forget all of that claptrap now. In this place together. My son taught me all of that in two weeks, and that dude doesn’t even talk yet.

The truth is I’ve always lived my own way. The more humble truth is that you can only really do that if the people in your life don’t throw you overboard for it. So I thank all of you for being here, in this realm, in this place of places, with me. And I thank my wife, for being better than me, and stronger than me and tolerant of me and all of the things I get wrong.  Did I end up doing the things I said I wouldn’t do in the opening paragraph? Oh well, promises and such.

--JR

Ps—We’re back around again. Playwriting, songwriting, new writer contests launching in the spring. Salon events in Boston, DC, and Connecticut in the lead up to the Dublin residency in May. The Sophisticants winter TCD cohort starting next winter. Ask us about them—newsquarelit@gmail.com.