November 21st, 2022 - Hinges

Dear TNY,

This Monday it’s “Hinges”, I see.

And, I’ll start by saying that in all likelihood, I have the ‘ronies.  That’s right, COVID.  My sister and her husband contracted the murderous virus early last week and seem to have passed it to me.  I have not tested, but doing so would be pointless.  They both did and popped hot and we all have the same symptoms.  I should say had, because it’s pretty much over now.  My sister tested negative this morning.  I say all this to say that I might be in the “fog”, if you will. 

This story is not my kind of story.  It’s another one of your garbage, meandering, blahblahblah stories where not a goddamn thing happens.  But, I really tried this week to look past that bullcockery and here’s what I found.

I write like this sometimes.  This meandering interiority (just finished a piece like this, actually).  And, I can’t be mad at it if I do it too and it’s time I realized that.  So I was trying to identify what was good.  And what was bad.  Like mine, most of the characters aren’t fleshed out (other than the MC, but as the camera is inside the MC’s head, it’s naturally a narcissistic piece (also, if it’s fiction, that’s cool because it’s not real, but that makes my nonfiction VERY terrible because it’s so narcissistic…YAY!).  So there was plenty to chew on with regard to the MC.  But was it good?  Not my cup of tea, for sure.  I have also written things with shared realities, being inside a memory and the present at the same time.  So knocking on that would be dickish too.  I liked the memory, that was possibly the best part about the story (that and the gentle touch in the car when I thought, like a bad Pornhub plot, the sister and brother were going to fuck (which would have fallen under the category of “something fucking happened!)).  The weird tension around J. Short worked, in my opinion.  Seems he got around with the mothers, maybe. Stud (to be clear, this does not mean I support dude studism entirely, and certainly not only in men; if there was an attractive carpentress making her way through the dads on the block, I’ll just say one thing…where do they live again, what street, thanks so much).  But that was vagueish, so we don’t know, but we know enough.

Man, I’m meandering now. 

What I’m trying to say is that this is just a bunch of shit, blasted out, and it’s pretty uninteresting.  I read it all, but it’s all just inside this lady’s head and I just don’t care.  Fuck, we don’t even really get to see the fucking funeral, the mom’s reaction, basically nothing but inside Annie’s head.  It’s not cool.  It’s not intriguing.  And the payoff is, what?  That she might not read the poem? That being said, there was tension in this story, at least some. And that’s alright with me.

So in conclusion, if I write like this sometimes, and this is kind of garbage, my work is also garbage and I should shoot myself in the fucking teeth.  Is that the conclusion?  I’m not about to say I do it better.  Who fucking knows.  This shit is all subjective.  The level of authority that you, TNY, think you have on the subject is exactly the same as mine, Larry The Cable Guy’s, Kobe Bryant’s (RIP), and Kim Jong-un’s.  So, is this story worthwhile?  Nah, it’s a skipper (unless they boned, goddamn it, like “Dynamite Hole” by Donald Ray Pollock, but if we’re honest, the brother and sister playing hide the salami is NOT the shocking part in that story).  Does the story matter?  No.  Does this type of writing matter?  No.  Does anything matter, really?  I think so.  It must, right?  Why am I so goddamn sad all the time if nothing fucking matters?  There must be some kind of prizes/consequences/etc for the feels to exist, right?  Either that or I haven’t been reading my Buddhist texts as much as I should be.

Ah well.  So yeah, I didn’t like it.  And yeah, my writing is probably shit too.  And yeah, I’m fucking lost in life.  And yeah, this FTNY shit is pointless.  And yeah, I’m insane (although, a good friend the other day said that I’m not insane, that I’m more sane than almost anyone he’s ever met, and I’m smart enough to call myself insane to others and myself such that I don’t have to face the fact that the world is as bad as I think it is and that I understand that all too well and that I’m actually very “with it”, and that by blanketing myself in the covers of insanity, I don’t have to face the fact that it’s/I’m/etc is not going to work out alright OR that it is OR that greatness is within me and I’m squandering it OR greatness is within me and I hate myself too much to accept it; he went on at length and…fuck that beautiful guy for challenging my insanity, goddamn it!).

So, there we have it.  ‘Ronies.  Interiority.  J. Short, the mother fucking (sic) carpenter of Yorkshire.  The whole world in the palm of our goddamn hands.

Yep, poopnoodle for a fucking brain on this end.

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!

Nick