December 16th, 2024 - Between the Shadow and the Soul

Dear TNY,

Only a day late on “Between the Shadow and the Soul” and I’m pretty proud of that.  At this point, anyway.

As you can tell, based on the last six months, I’m falling apart.  So this tardiness should come as no surprise.

Let’s talk about this story.  It’s good.  And I’ll be specific about what I mean by “good.”  Groff is a master.  Flat out.  Her stories come to life and crackle with energy.  They are so decadent and wonderful that they make me not want to write anymore.  She’s got a special talent which she has honed to create stories like this that saturate you in their world.  And what makes them so good is her deftness at craft.  Her vocabulary.  Her unique word choices and/or word pairings.  And that craft is used to bring characters to life that feel lived in, real, and very fucking relatable.

Was this my favorite story by her?  No.  Because I didn’t feel the transcendence in it.  It was building and building and then it broke just short of the mark, in my opinion.  But I don’t really care because I thought it was fantastically written and sometimes chewing on the food just to chew on delicious food is enough (see:  Lolita). 

Here’s my favorite sentence in the whole story:

She had just wanted to know what it was like to brush up against the dazzling future again.  

Fuck yeah, lady.  Don’t we fucking all.  Don’t we goddamn all want that fucking feeling.  I sure could use it right now.

Also, I was pumped to see one of my favorite authors reference my favorite Neruda poem in the title. 

Well, that’s all I have the energy for.  Sorry for shit content.  I can’t do everything or be everything to everyone all the time.  As much as I want to be the legend some people think I am, I’m also a weak human being that just wanted a very particular person to love him back.  And that didn’t work out.  So now I’m swimming in dark waters.

Speaking of swimming in dark waters, I swam with manta rays, at night, last week.  They are enormous and fly like angels.  And speaking of angels, my sister has been approached twice now by strangers with messages from my brother and father, both having been removed of their lives.  Speaking of lives, I was at Smith’s Union Bar in Honolulu last week and I wanted to die again.  Right then and there.  Because I don’t really want to keep doing this anymore. Feels like the evidence has piled up that this is the wrong path.

But here I am.

Nick