April 8th, 2024 - Bozo
Dear TNY,
It’s amateur hour this Monday with “Bozo”.
This is what a 7th grader would write if asked what she thought grown-up life was like. And it’s not that grown up life is or isn’t like this. I’m saying this two-dimensional shit is a bad representation of the human condition. So, if that’s the case, what’s the point? I don’t know.
But honestly, I don’t know shit. The more I learn, the more I don’t know. It’s like walking down a new hallway in a building I’ve always been in, with door after door after door stretching to an indiscernible finite point (like the long hallways in Vegas hotels). I just found this hallway, man. Now you’re telling me I need to know what’s in all of these doors too? How many hallways are there? How many doors do I have to open?
Yesterday I spent a couple hours on two light switches, 3-ways (sex references, hey-o!), sorting out issues to make them work as intended. Conquered those issues. More issues in front of me today. But I’m plagued by this underlying notion. Every day, I think that maybe writing isn’t for me. Maybe love isn’t for me. Maybe none of this is for me. Like, I can see how it’s supposed to work but no one, including myself, seems to be pulling it off. Just remove my emotional core and point me at a problem I can solve with my hands. And feed me beers, because then I won’t have the emotional aptitude to worry about what’s going to happen with the rest of my life.
Speaking of the rest of a life, my sister and husband are talking divorce. They have a kid. And her husband won’t talk to me. Not that I’m trying to talk him out of it. I’m just trying to explain that he doesn’t have all the data. He thinks he does. Hell, I thought I did. But there’s no way to understand what it feels like to, in a best case scenario, spend half the time you used to get with your kid. Half! It could end up being like me or my buddy Ben (FUCK YOU FOR DYING I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS, NOT JUST ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU DIE BUT HOW DO I GET THROUGH THIS SHIT, MAN), where you don’t see them for months on end. Dropping them off, at the airport or otherwise, not knowing when you’ll see them again. Fuck, I know an ex-couple that has a clause in their divorce agreement that doesn’t allow them to live more than 50 miles apart. So now you can’t choose where you want to live in the world, you know? Two Christmases. Two birthdays. Arguments about vaccines? What? Anyway, we’ve all seen the movies. We’ve seen the sitcoms. We understand the information, right? We are adults and this is basic shit. Right?! But, some of us know it. That’s the difference. When distraught over my own lost time, I asked my father how he walked away from his first two kids, never hearing from the youngest…like ever again (I’ve met her and she’s quite nice). And he said you find someone new, have more kids, and forget about the others. And then he said, after a beat, you never forget. I’m not trying to say my sister and her husband should stay together. I’m not trying to say every story turns out badly. I’m not trying to say anything, I guess, other than to offer more information to try to get him to understand that he does not know what is going to happen, but that it most likely will be quite different from how he imagines it and it will be far more difficult than he thinks. For them both. Oh, and the human they made.
I texted my sister this morning to say this about it: I haven’t done anything since divorce that I wouldn’t trade for more time with my kids. But I had to lose them to understand that.
And that is maybe, in the most Passenger sense, the real issue with the human condition. Trying to maintain the wild desire that got you the thing you wanted, and not let it slip away just to learn how valuable it was to you. But we are all trapped inside these machines, not fit for society and its problems, trying to believe we understand what’s going on within ourselves and those around us. With complicated things like quantum mechanics and economics and political science and mental health and the inner workings of a two-barrel carburetor. The truth is we don’t know shit. And the sooner we admit that, the better this will all be. I could use some help with the wiring, you know? And maybe there’s an electrician who would like to craft a nice biography for his or her father. It doesn’t have to be so goddamn complicated. Find love. Choose love. And then choose to make it work. Look at the other person every night and say, “Man I don’t know anything other than that I love you and this fucking life is a wild ride and I really appreciate you being the one to hold my hand while I go through it, and I appreciate that you want me to hold your hand while you go through it too. What I’m saying is I’m glad we got through today together. Wanna do it tomorrow as well?”
And then maybe we’ll get 40 years together.
We just have to stop fucking up. All of us. That includes figuring out how to stop fucking up the apologies and stop fucking up the hearing of the apologies. And stop fucking up patience work.
Ben used to work with severely disabled adults (I’m not sure in this 10x woke world what the PC term is, so know that I mean no offense here). Debilitating, cannot be left alone levels of disability. He was a live-in babysitter, as it were. And he never got mad at any of them for the things they did, but he would rage at his two oldest boys if they made stupid mistakes. And I asked him once why that was. How could he be so patient with one set of people and have so little patience with another set. And he said that he knows what his children know because he taught them. And they should know better. That the other group, he has no idea what they know or how well they can even hang on to what they know. He said they didn’t know any better, so how can you get mad?
I’ll posit to you, TNY, how do any of us know any better? This is all made up. By the day. No one knows. Why can’t we be Ben and understand that even though we are pretty sure you know better, maybe we approach with some grace and kindness. Always. We’d do a lot better, I’ll tell you that much. Myself included.
Well, that about wraps it up. I’ll see you next week.
Nick
P.S. The wizard cannot unknow about the socks, or the Froot Loops! And what I find fascinating, and really sad now that I’m thinking about it, is that Ben knew both those things, having discovered them on his own, and how I am left wholly alone in this world without him here, a traveller passing through with so much gold, so many ways to learn from him, to live differently, with more patience, more curiosity, more understanding, and to not fucking die. I text him all the time. He never texts back. What luck that I get to lose two brothers in this life. No wonder I seek comfort in hand-based tasks. They require so much physically and mentally, so that I can keep some blinders on and get through a day, feeling like my life still has value even though I’m all alone. Goddamn was I reminded of the post from last year, about being nice. Uncurling a fist into an open hand. And tracing my hand. I don’t understand why, when people are hurt and hurting back, we choose to keep punching each other in the heart instead of stopping and scooping a person up. Because that’s what is needed. Warm, kind hands to scoop us the fuck up. But again, what do I know? I don’t know shit.
