November 4th, 2024 - From the Wilderness
Dear TNY,
You have given me “From the Wilderness” as we enter this last week of October.
I don’t care for it. The first two thirds of the piece are action based, which is engaging to be sure, but that style of story only maintains its value if the payoff in the end is transcendence. This story does not transcend. Nor does it commit to the action, superficially, and see it through. An example of transcending would be “Bullet in the Brain” and seeing the action through would be The DaVinci Code. This does neither and shits itself uncontrollably after a night of elote, golden and corn filled. So yes, we have a narrative that’s moving, there’s shit at risk, and the tension is there. That’s good.
But it did shit the bed, as stated. Because once the perpetrator was caught, we shift into a mode of literary existentialism that is navel-gazing at best. At worst it’s just a waste of my fucking time. You want me to believe that somehow in the protagonist’s words, he laid the groundwork for a part of himself that validated and understood the loneliness in another, and another whose specificity of loneliness was so distinctly similar that this motherfucker broke into his house to read books? Now don’t get me wrong, part of the reason I write is so that I feel less alone in this world, and so that, if someone else reads it, they feel less alone. But those stories aren’t about writers writing stories and musing about how their subconscious is bringing wild people from the wilderness. I mean how egotistical for the guy to think that his wilderness produced another fully sentient human. And I don’t mean made him, like conjuring a person. But that his broken shit pulled a broken person from the world. Horsecock. It’s just dumb. It has that distinct waft of the goo that collects in the bottom of a dumpster, when a story seems to have been written with the idea of discussing a thing the author wanted to write about and a story was built around it, instead of letting the story dictate where it wanted to go.
But, you know, it’s very on brand for you, TNY. It’s shit.
I worked the jewelry box today. Three drawers are on slides now. The necklace side is fully open. I’m an idea machine. Problem solver. Crazy person.
Am I heartbroken? You bet your fucking ass I am. I realized that the thing I’m heartbroken over is that she wasn’t ready to live the life we talked about. Probably never wanted it. But I was. And because of my experiences I actually knew what it took to live that life and had all the skills. I was so ready to be ready and then, when the chance struck, I was ready and I was proud of myself for drawing a line in the sand and saying, “enough.” And that’s fucking awesome. I got there.
But I say this with a vast wealth of life experiences in this short 43 year old life: If I’m not enough, no one is. That’s how it works. One day you understand that all this bullshit you want, you won’t get it. You get some of it. But never all. So you learn to say, “enough.” That’s not settling. It’s realizing there is no end to, “more.” And sometimes two people don’t line up that way. So I’m mourning a future in which I had enough. I don’t know if I will find that again. But, onwards and upwards. I’m moving in a direction of hard fought and won beauty and I’ll keep doing it. And I will continue to grow in my kindness, which even though I was convinced for the past two years I was not kind, I am. I am kind. Very fucking kind. I just have low tolerance for certain things. These things the vast majority of people have a low tolerance for as well. We learned them in kindergarten. Regardless, I’m the motherfucking prize. And according to those in my life, it is a gift if I choose to shine your direction. I’ll take that data. All day long. And maybe sometimes I’ll even ingest it.
Anyway, another one in the books.
Nick
