January 22nd, 2024 - Chance the Cat
Dear TNY,
Here we are midway through January, and I just cruised through “Chance the Cat”.
I read all the words. No skimming. And I only did so because I recognized the author’s name as being responsible for other stories I thought were okay.
Or at least I thought I did.
I just went to check and due to laziness on my part and a strong desire to not give a fuck, I couldn’t find any other stories by him (I should have maybe checked the googles, but did not). I feel the need to emphasize, again, that I did not find any information due to extreme laziness. I am certain more information is readily available. I just can’t be bothered.
Okay, back into the groove, as it were. I do feel like I didn’t need to read all the words, though. This story…meh. Not for me. It’s too…man, I just don’t give a fuck and your magazine and the author did little to convince me otherwise.
I got kind of high last night and watched a long video that was analyzing modern vs postmodern vs metamodern movies. I found it to be sometimes confusing (see: drugs) as they were explaining the differences, and which movies began the subtle shifts away from a story told straightforwardly (modern) and more towards stories that call attention to themselves as stories (post and meta). It’s a tricky business calling attention to the story as a story. Has to be handled correctly. Because too much of that shit and the reader (or viewer) is being talked down to. Or being told how it’s all working, and the telling causes the consumer to reject being told anything. It’s gotta be like that adage: the best way to get a man to do what you want is to give the idea to him, convince him it was his idea, and then support him executing it by saying what a good idea he had and how well it’s going.
Hold the phone, I just googled that “idea” idea above and read a few articles that were written with the sole purpose of manipulating men. I’m not sure humans were meant to make it this far, guys. We’ve really lost our way. What happened to just keeping your head down, working really hard, and being thankful if you get a pickle with your sandwich?
Speaking of work, I have been working a lot. In fact, in my drugs last night I was nearly convinced that I had broken my scaphoid again. Not last night, though. Two days ago (as I’m typing this, I’m still not convinced that my bones are well; I’m getting shooting pains and it’s very tender to the touch). See, I’m installing a deck. It’s for a hot tub. So the support needs to be substantial. Lots of piers and such. And I want the deck to be one step up from the sidewalk (self-imposed torture, I know). That means digging the piers down, as well as the beams, and having to level off the ground as well so none of the pressure treated wood touches it. During this process, I discovered what I believe to be an old “hobby pond”. There were the pump & hoses, and a fake log that had lights in it, and a little fish that squirted water out of its mouth. All of this was inside a large, thick, waterproof tarp. Along with trash. So much fucking trash. Like someone dumped two pickup loads of trash into the pond and then fucking buried the whole goddamn mess right there in the front yard, right where I am supposed to build a deck (as I am typing this, I’m thinking that no one is making me build a deck, it’s not my deck, not my trash, not my yard, not my anything, really; more self-imposed torture, so to speak). So in addition to all the digging that I told you I needed to do, I also dug up the whole fucking tarp and collection of trash (not even cool trash, mind you, like old bottles from the turn of the century (1900, you feel me?), just trash trash). So I’m throwing myself at this. As well as the two mountains of dirt that I removed from the pit I’m working in. All by hand. And maybe I broke something is what I’m saying.
What I’m actually saying is that maybe I am something broken. If everyone is a story model, I am “man against himself”. Like, what do I have to prove out there with the shovel? With the deck? With the art carvings I made in Hawai’i? With the fucking letters I write to you? With the countless essays that remain unpublished in my backlog? Or any of the short fiction pieces that I’ll never try to publish? What am I doing, learning all of these things, trying to be useful? What’s this all about?
(Small break from this argument to say that when I reread this, I asked myself when was the last time I felt like I didn’t have anything to prove, and that’s really hit and miss, because sometimes, like now, I don’t feel like I have anything to prove, but I’m still writing this letter and doing FTNY trying to prove my voice matters, which it definitely does not, and then, in that thinktrain, I happened upon freediving again, which I think about often these days, and in that activity I will say that I do have something to prove, but it’s only to me, so imagine there you are floating on the surface, watching the ocean and its little creatures below, then taking in all the air your can get and diving down into a dark lava tube that opens into a cave where fish fill the shadows all around you, and you keep flicking your fins to push you down further, because in that darkness there’s a blue blue light at the bottom, a way out, and you wriggle through that little portal, equalizing pressure as you go, a quick snort into the goggles to keep your eyes in your goddamn head, and pop out of the side of an underwater cliff, deep down, man, fucking deep, deeper than you have ever been, and before you let the desperation in and clamor back to the top for air, you just float and watch the surface undulate way up there and marvel at the ulua school swimming around you, their scales broad and so fucking shiny they almost sing to you underwater, yeah, you just go limp down there, holding, and holding, no one else around even though you have been scolded many times for freediving alone and the dangers of that, and let’s take that back years and years now to Bishop, CA, where you’d also boulder alone, highball problems at the Buttermilks, sketching yourself the fuck out on a V2 that’s 40ft tall, taking falls that no one should take, once eating shit so hard, alone again, in the Happys that you had to ask two climbers you didn’t know who were far away to look at the back of your head to see if your brains were falling out, another time falling hard in Germany, landing on your side on a stump and another boulder and your knee twisted up so badly that you realized you needed to get to the car as quickly as possible because once the pain and swelling hit, minutes from now, you might not be able to walk all that well and you needed to drive three hours to Frankfurt to pick up your then wife, who, maybe more than anyone, understood who you were because twelve years is a lot of fucking years, so there you go with your holey sweater and your dirty trousers and your green felted wool bag and your crashmat, which you did not land on, hobble-running your way out of the dank woods, too wet to climb that day anyway, hoping to get to the airport on time if we are honest, but really, there you are deep underwater with no one around to see you live or die other than these big fucking fish who do not give a fuck, and that’s maybe what you have to prove, that you don’t matter, no matter how hard you work or what you do or make, that you don’t matter, the fish don’t matter, the sea cave doesn’t matter, the deck doesn’t matter, the trash, the dog, the anything, really, and maybe I just want to have a beer with my friend and not fix everything for everyone all the time, maybe I need someone to fix my shit too, to be considerate of me, my time, my skills, my life, but that friend is dead, like really dead, like he really fucking died this year and I’ll never hear from him again, like his bones and skin and his wrecked organs and his nasty-ass poncho got burned up and some of that shit resides in a test tube in my backpack, so there we are, down in the water, the fish, the boulders, highballing, pulling trash out of the ground, dreaming the slider to the van was opening on Marrowstone Island and love was walking in, over and over and over again, instead ending up swimming to the surface alone, just to get more air, to go back down once more.)
But on the other hand, I am disgusted by people who do nothing. Who talk and talk yet their hands can’t fucking figure out how to build a life. These two really flexible meatbone things on the stalks that stick out from your torso? They are right in front of you, guys (pre-sorry to my amputee readers (or other ails that cause no-handedness), you fellas and fellettes get the metaphor, I’m sure, and can claw a life out too). So while I’m sitting here, sore enough that I can barely type with my middle finger on my left hand, and wondering why I do that to myself, I’m also sitting here looking down on everyone whose fingers are fine and who are okay with their fingers being fine. And I wonder why that is. Do I need to suffer? And when I do suffer, do I need others to suffer with me? And if they don’t, why do I get so upset by that? What do they have to prove? What do I have to prove? What’s this all about, again?
For me, maybe the thing that I get so upset about is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Your hands make the bottom of the pyramid. And if the bottom is made, then you get a shot at self-actualization and maybe even transcendence. You don’t get to cheat your way to the top. Maybe that’s my beef. A decade ago, when I was getting my MFA, I had a writing mentor who put out a book of short stories. And someone he knew read it and asked him where he got such a strong sense of justice. And the writer, my mentor, was taken aback. He hadn’t written a single story about justice. Or so he thought. But to the reader, each story was plainly about justice. Balance being delivered. And I see that now in myself. Where’s the fucking justice, man? I put in the fucking hours. I’ll keep putting in the hours. But where’s everyone else? Where’s the fucking justice?
And then I’m suddenly disgusted at myself. Who am I to judge? Where’s that right coming from? Because it shouldn’t exist. What’s happening to me?
So what I should say is that Mr. Means wrote a story (congrats) and got it published in TNY (more congrats). I should be happy for him. But I’m not. Because his fucking scaphoid is whole and his middle finger works. Fuck you, Mr. Means. This story isn’t good enough. Your pyramid sucks and your “self-actualization” isn’t earned or real. But, Mr. Means, my guess is you fucking know that and you are doing some form of self-flagellating somewhere in your life. Or my hope is that’s what’s happening. That would make you a good fella. And my eternal hope is that everyone is a good fella, as it were, punishing themselves justly.
And this is likely why I am let down.
But in the case of me, I guess I need to get back in the hole and keep digging. Because the answers are down there somewhere. Under the next rock maybe. Or maybe in the Super Mario Brothers 3 NES cartridge which slid out from under the front seat of a rented U-Haul used to take the trash to the dump. Or maybe there are no answers, which is what I’m inclined to believe, that attempting to understand all this is a waste of time, and maybe letting it all flow through you is really where it’s at, being curious, as it were, judging little, and just being excited to exist at all.
But to be clear, work. Work your motherfucking fingers to the bone. Because at the end of the day you have the obligation to be responsible for yourself. Make your fucking pyramid from the ground up, with your goddamn hands. If there’s time left over, self-actualize your own metamodern story. Or, just drink a few beers and play pinball. Nothing really matters anyway.
Well, I did talk to my sons yesterday and I was trying to describe to them what loving your kids feels like, which is fucking impossible to describe. They did not care, naturally. But I did. And continued to cry about it after I hung up the phone.
Well, I’m insane. Great.
Nick
