May 27th, 2024 - Thataway

Dear TNY,

I couldn’t even skim “Thataway” because it’s a pointless endeavor of words.

I’d like to take a moment to summarize the first half of this story for you.  Not the narrative.  But the structure.  It goes something like this:

Character A verbs.  Character A verbs again.  Seven to Eight sentences of Character A’s backstory which are irrelevant other than to introduce Character B.

Character B verbs.  Character A verbs and Character B verbs.  Ten sentences of Character B’s backstory which is irrelevant but introduces Character C & D.

Character C verbs.  Four sentences of Character C’s backstory.

Character A verbs and, in the same sentence via more backstory, Character E is introduced.

Character D verbs.  And verbs again.

Character E verbs.  Character E backstory is three whole paragraphs.

Character A verbs.  Character A talks about Character B’s backstory to Character C.

I could go on, but then I’d be wasting your time like this story wasted mine.

I’m sure this story is the bee’s knees for people who love novels but don’t have time to read one.  But it’s an abomination to short fiction and is the type of work which has eroded and continues to erode a bastion of Art that has real potential to inject much needed empathy into humanity.  What do they think this shit is?  Some silly endeavor to support each other’s egos and/or navel-gazing?

It isn’t.

If you aren’t fighting for your motherfucking life while writing, put the fucking pen down. 

I was explaining to one of my therapists the other day (one of, get this, FOUR) that when you are this depressed for this long, your perspective changes radically.  Instead of not paying attention to one’s existence, or thinking it’s a given and just floating through life, you have to spend each day looking for reasons to continue living.  And that’s hard when you are swinging for the fences, which is how it is when your perspective shifts in the beginning.  You are looking for grandiose gestures from the universe that you belong here and it will get better.  But when those don’t show up, because they won’t, you dive deeper into the hole.  And slowly you find yourself in a place so deep and dark that you will accept anything that is beautiful.  Just maybe one fucking thing can save you (for my sister, it was laying in the hospital bed in the ER after they made you throw up all the script pills you took to kill yourself and your friend comes in late at night with her toddler son who is young and sleepy so he crawls up on your chest and goes to sleep and you can feel his heartbeat through your sternum and realize that you don’t want to die, never wanted to die, no matter what). So you scour every corner of your life looking for the tiniest shred of beauty so that you can confirm this place has something to offer (and you, knowing you have something to offer if someone would just take the time to see you) and you don’t need to leave just yet.  Maybe it’s the column of dust swirling in a beam of sun coming low into your room, in the morning, before you rise.  Or a line in a song that you never quite heard the right way because you were always distracted, but now you hear it almost agonizingly.  Or the one from two days ago, at a gas station in Yakima, WA, when a young Hispanic couple got out of their car and pumped gas together, holding each other and kissing while they did it.  Can you imagine, TNY?!  The need to be close so strong that even at the gas station, while pumping gas, they both got out and touched each other?  Fuck my face is this place beautiful.

That is where Art should come from.  A savage, manic desire to rifle through all of the horsecockery that is modern life to find a shred of beauty, and then hold that shred up for others to see so that we all might find a fucking reason to keep being here.  Every fucking word you write should be one foot on that fucking beach, in a hail of gunfire, to get evercloser to winning your fucking life back from the hands of evil.  Fight like you fucking mean it.  And write like it’s a fucking fight.  Otherwise, get the fuck off my pages because I don’t have time for that shit.  No one should.

Well, I thought I would write about how I feel alone today, but I wrote that crazy shit above instead.  See, I have another alone adventure afoot.  One of an uncountable number.  This time, back to EU.  Everyone is so happy for me.  Asking me if I’m excited.  I am not.  I’ve done all this before, see.  Seen these people.  Been these places.  I’m just looking for someone to be in the seat next to me on the plane, holding my hand, excited for my life.  Our life.  That’s the shred of beauty right there.  Time. Our greatest gift to each other. That’ll keep a motherfucker alive for ages.

Anyway, I’m gassed. Lately I cannot point to a time in the day or night when I’m not absolutely exhausted.  And I need to shit again.  Can’t be taking constipation on a ten hour flight.  Yuck.

Later.

Nick

P.S. The above was written at the dining room table at my sister’s. This bit is written from a bar at the airport. I’ve squirted through the eye of needle one. Many more to go. And what more is there to say? I’m talking to you. You never say, “No.” You always want to know what’s going on with me. You never judge me. You are always here when I need you. What a crock of shit humanity can be in times like these. I’m talking to a blank page that will never talk back, just to be heard. Someone asked me the other day, “Why does it feel so good when someone rubs your knees?” And I thought about this a lot. And the heartbreaking conclusion that I came to was that one of the most breathtakingly beautiful things about existing, human touch, is locked behind somehow cutting through all the bullshit two people can create between each other so they put their weapons down and love with their hands and the rest of their bodies. Couple this self-imposed human experiment of being homeless for five years and constant travel and other people being pinned down by financial obligations and other life clamps, and it’s a fucking miracle I’m still here. I’ve said this many times, but it always bears repeating, straight from the echoes of my dead father’s mouth: Six months from now it won’t be like this. Now, the real gamble is will it be better or worse? I’ll have to keep scrounging beauty to try to find out.