Why As Ever?
I don’t remember the first time I signed off a letter or email with as ever. But at some point it emerged as proper to a certain ideal form of communication: intimate, digressive, self-revelatory but not narcissistic, earnest but not solemn, playful but not superficial, amusing but not glib.
In other words, all that is good in letter writing, and conversation more broadly. Warmth. Directness. Camaraderie. True liberality—the suspension of judgment, the willingness to entertain the challenging and unfamiliar and contradictory. A bit of inscrutability—elliptical, mysterious, gestural—and the pleasure, the relief, in nonetheless being intuitively understood. As ever: Capacious enough for all occasions, all stations of life, grief or celebration.
As ever: Steadfast in a swirling age. As always, it says: as it always has been and always will be, in saecula saeculorum. A statement of recognition of the past, of faith in the future, and affection in the moment. And a statement of warning: that what is irascible and tiresome in me, the conflicts and resentments and disappointments between us—these probably aren’t going anywhere either.
And so: a statement of fullness, of wholeness, of acceptance: with each other we must always take the bad with the good, and never forget the good for the bad, or the ways in which they cast light on each other.
A refuge, too, from the dreary if necessary hierarchies of everyday life: here only, à la Montaigne, the sunlit equality of friendship.
Okay, but what is it?
This is my digital notebook. Currently, subscribing to As Ever nets you the following:
An occasional letter generally combining longer-form thoughts with a snippeted curation of good stuff I’m reading, watching, or listening to.
Stand-alone essays on culture, art, literature, or other matters of public import.
A smattering of fiction, poetry, notes, and other occasional literary output.
It’s currently free to subscribe, though if you like my work and want to help me be able to do more of it, you can pledge to support a paid subscription in the future.
If that sounds like you, welcome friend. Pull up a chair, pour some tea, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Come as you are and leave when you like.
Who are you?
I am a writer and a painter. My culture writing has appeared in outlets like Plough Quarterly and Commonweal, and most recently I was awarded first prize in the 2024 Catholic Literary Arts Sacred Poetry Contest. In my free time, I like to surf, drive around listening to music, go to church, disappear into fathomless boreal forests on impulsive vision quests, and read.
