July 31st, 2023 - A French Doll

Dear TNY,

This Monday has arrived, like others before it, and you have given us “A French Doll”.

This piece is not for me.  It’s not the type of piece I’d ever be interested in reading.  I don’t think it “means” anything.  In fact, this is the type of piece that would have existed years and years ago and also, likely, meant nothing back then.  The writing borders on purple (I’m saying that nicely; it is, in fact, purple).  It’s trying too hard to make some kind of point or be some kind of story or be some kind of art or capture some kind of meaning or make some kind of statement.  It’s trying to be important, maybe?  I don’t know. I don’t think it succeeded, I guess. At least, it didn’t over here. What’s to be said about a story in which some kind of understanding is force-fed one’s way at the hands of overwrought prose?  It is only about 3400 words, which I was thankful for.  So there is that.

Everyone is into their own thing, I guess.  For the author, I’m sure this was all encompassing.  I’ve had that feeling before so I get it.  It can be everything to you when to everyone else it’s nothing (except for Deborah; for her it must have been something; on that note, Deborah has been the gatekeeper for TNY fiction for 20 years; I wonder 1) why anyone should have that much power over the driving force of an artform for so long and 2) how refreshing it would be to have a different gatekeeper).

So, there’s that I guess.  Another letter out of the way.  Another fucking Monday in the books.  My oldest son is walking laps around Palolo listening to Eminem.  My youngest son is doing calisthenics in the living room next to me.  They’ll be gone this weekend. Can’t think about that.  Can’t think about going back to the suffering. 

Oh, and Ben?  He died. Can’t think about that either, it seems.

But, really, what is there to say about that?  Everything is different.  He is gone.  Everyone is handling it differently.  And I can’t tell you, even now, what it all means.  I’m sitting here writing this with not one tear in my eye.  I feel an ocean of guilt because in the past couple of days, after hearing he passed, I’ve felt nothing at all.  Well, that’s not true.  I had a phone call with a friend up in AK that reminded me that all the feels are still here, and growing, I’m just packing them away.  Maybe?  I don’t know what’s happening inside my head.  Regardless, Ben has left us and it’s all weird right now, okay?  Like, for a week or two, those that cared about him were in contact, checking in on each other often, gathering information about their perception of what happened over the last year, or more.  Like that rug in The Big Lebowski, he really tied the room together.  And now?  I don’t know.  I don’t fucking know.  I guess, times like these, it’s expected that everyone is in their own inner maze.  Doing work.  Doing something.  Like, he drew us all together, where we all flapped our wings and tried to generate as much love and warmth as we could to bring him back.  And at the center of that, he just didn’t make it, instead becoming a silent, imperceptible detonation, blasting us all back to our lives, forever changed.

I don’t know what to say.  I’m telling you, I know something has happened.  Something immense.  But I cannot tell you what it is.  I cannot put shape to it.  If he were alive, I’d ask him how he would put it.  And maybe that’s where I am.  Denial that he isn’t out there anymore. That I can no longer ask him anything. I would tell him to check out Barbie, though. I think he would have laughed. Often. He did find this world to be excruciatingly beautiful. Too much to bear, it seems.

I’m rambling.

Well, what more is there to say?  The world is going to be a little duller from now on.  In ways that most of you will never know.

Nick