April 22nd & 29th, 2024 - Late Love
Dear TNY,
What ho! “Late Love”!
Um, who gives a fuck about it? I know this shit is name-based. How could it not be?
The protagonist is whiny, fragile, easily frightened, and prone to batshit theories. The husband (who appears to be the antagonist?) is barely a character, as we only get to experience him through the woman’s eyes, and very distant at that, as he is made of facts about his past that are meaningless to the narrative, and even though he seemingly does nothing wrong, his wife hunts around the house to find clues to establish that he killed his first wife. But it’s all a dream? Or many dreams?
While the writing is notable in that it’s done by a refined hand, and why wouldn’t it be as she’s been writing for many, many years, it doesn’t do anything. The tension from the first nightmare is blown early because the author left too much fat between when the wife is awakened and the husband is awakened (the fat is backstory that’s unneeded anyway). And as the story continues to unfurl, it has this quality to it that…
So people rave about Quentin Tarantino. And sure, there are a lot of things to rave about. But if you’ve ever watched an interview with him, or many as I have, you start to characterize the way he speaks. It’s excitable, energetic, and he injects uncommon words just often enough to make it stick out as a pattern. It’s very distinctive, the way he talks. It was when I was watching Four Rooms that I first noticed every character in his section of the movie sounded like him. And after seeing it once, I’ve never been able to unsee it. So when I watch a Tarantino flick, I watch his words come out of all of the characters mouths, same energy and vocabulary in all of them, snipping some of the hawsers of suspension of disbelief (<—did you guys see what I did there with hawsers and suspension…what an idiot).
That’s what this story has going on. I can’t see anything other than the author talking. The characters can’t break free from their creator, coming to life on their own OR the author won’t step back and let them. I think it’s the latter. I could grab many references, but I’ll stick with the best one. To set the scene, the husband is having another wild nightmare (maybe…it could be the wife who is having it, but from her perception it’s all reality) and the wife wants to reach over and wake the husband to save him from this dream. But she is frightened as she woke him once before and he was upset about it. So she reaches out her hand and this is the next line:
“An aphorism of Pascal’s came to her: We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something down before us to prevent us from seeing it.”
Get the fuck out of town. Like, pack up your fucking clothes, grab you spare shoes, bring a thick coat because you’ll probably need it, and get the fuck out of town. Nonsense! These are supposed to be real people!
Anyway, I’m done.
On my end I am fine. I am not fine. Broken actually. I discovered this week how I see love. How I feel loved. My sister, for instance, calling every day to check on me, doesn’t feel like love to me and it’s kind of annoying but she means well and I get that so I appreciate it (I also understand this is how she feels loved). If she came out I would be more upset, because while that is the love I crave—the show up—it’s not from her (and crave is the word, like nourishment…or as the special lady said, a deficit, and dear God have I run up a deficit). As my buddy is fond of saying, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” So here I am with needs and wants and boatloads of life-changing love to give. And I’m in a basement by myself in a town far from anything where I know two people, one of which isn’t here that often. And what my heart wants isn’t in the basement. I know very few things about the world and all the things that one can know. But I know that to be true.
And this is life. These things happen. This is being human. This is what we do.
Back to work today. As every day. If I can make enough grilled cheese sandwiches maybe this nightmare will end.
LEECHES!
Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself from taking one last dig at the story.
Later.
Nick
P.S. I’m listening to Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1 while I write this and thinking about my beautiful friend listening to his wife play this, even grabbing a short video of her doing so, and raving to his two friends about how perfect it all was, but, me, knowing now the rest of that story, here was a man who was, in addition to many conflicting qualities, desperate for this woman to be excited to touch him, instead, him, like a baby untouched, withering and withering.
Ah bud, I miss you. Even your darkness made the world brighter and a better place to live in. I hope all is well out there. Tell my fam hi for me. And that they can eat a bushel of heaven-dicks for leaving so soon.
