November 24th, 2025 - Lara's Theme
Dear TNY,
“Lara’s Theme” landed on Monday, and I just scooped it up.
I don’t know, man. It’s fine. I can’t explain why I finished it. The writing was good enough, I guess. Some of the characters were well developed. Probably half. Tony. The father. The mom was cardboard, but she was consistent cardboard. Etc. Some of the imagery was really good. The descriptions in Tony’s studio. The funeral scene. But some were terrible. Like the cloud at our feet. I think it was a sari? It said sari. But I don’t know why there was a sari there? Maybe I’m not cultured. Spoiler Alert: I’m not cultured.
It was…slightly more than beige? I cared enough to keep reading. The graduation scene was the zenith, but it didn’t really matter. Not much was at stake in this. Or the author didn’t do a good job of conveying what was at stake. And the end was, what? Nothing. Predictable. Telegraphed the whole time. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve worn motorcycle helmets and been whacked in the head. It doesn’t not hurt. Much like all those football players with CTE, no amount of padding can stop your brain from whacking against the inside of your skull. So the totem in this story is mostly unbelievable, other than to exist as a totem.
On my end, I survived another week. I feel better today. She blocked me yesterday, which made me chuckle. I asked if she would go to a wedding with me last week. And she ignored it because she doesn’t use that messenger that often. Until she found it and there was a flurry of activity, logging off and on, but not looking at it nor responding. Which means I was in archive and by texting something, I pushed myself out of archive. She finally did say “No”. I responded in kind, “Okay. No worries.” And that was that. Then two days later, blocked. There was a flurry of activity in between on her end, which means she was checking if I was online and/or responding, which she has admitted to in the past. Which, no judgement. I do the same. My guess is she got frustrated with some OCD on her end so put me back in archive and blocked me so I couldn’t squirt out of it. Likely, someone else has a problem being apart too. But instead of asking herself “why”, she chooses to ignore it. That’s fine. Love can’t be ignored. It always has other plans.
I got out of bed a lot this week. Installed the door trim. Painted. Caulked. And, a surprise to me, I closed in the dog door that some idiot installed in the wall. I also stayed in bed a lot. I hit lows. Saw the doom machine. Thought I would die again. Not of my own power, but my heart just quitting. Had a conversation with a friend this week about Ben, on the subject of death. We surmised that he died of surrender. When I was a kid, I thought things were so simple. They really aren’t. Humans are a messy species. So complex. So contradictory. So hypocritical. So frail. Yet durable. It takes love to get through this. You have to love the complexity, you know? To look at Ben and say: He didn’t die of alcoholism, he died of sadness that he tried to fix with the temporary cure that alcohol provides. He wanted to be loved, like any one of us. And, he was not loved the way he wanted to be loved. I’m not going to say he loved perfectly. Or that he was a gentle soul without problems. I’m saying that for the majority of his life, starting as a child and moving through the years, he wasn’t loved the way he wanted to be loved. And he was smart enough to understand that at 42 years old, if it hadn’t happened yet, it might not. And then it got to the point where he didn’t care if it did or not. It’s like we are all on a long trolley and you can ring whenever you want to get off. And Ben and his wife, they got off at the same spot. But when a later trolley came along, going somewhere new, he didn’t need new. He had everything he wanted. She did not. So she got on and left him behind. No judgement, again, against her. Hell, I’ve done it and I still cry about it. But put yourself in his shoes. How would you feel? As he said when he was informed the divorce was going to happen, “No one ever thought to consult me.”
There are some that struggle to stay here. You are either those people, or if you aren’t you have them in your life. It is hard for some of us. So, you know, try to go easy on us. All of this is as real to me as your life is as real to you. I’m haunted by monsters. But I experience joy so warmly and sharply that I wouldn’t mind passing away because of it. Sex, for us, is like shedding our corporeal forms and mingling inner light with a lovely partner. Music is like angels playing sinew cords strung harp-like inside our ribcages. And loss. Loss is like dying, but with no conclusion on the horizon. Grief is as bright as love, but with no place to put it. And love. Love is the sun. A former lover once described my love like the sun when everyone else she met had love like a flashlight. Love is the center of all of this, every fiber of the tangible neural network and all the invisible ones, latched into the outward facing ports of the Collective Unconscious. And maybe you think this is hyperbole. That’s fair. The best example I have for you is writing, at least what I feel like when I do it. When I’m writing something that I know isn’t me, that I am not capable of it, I am tapped into the innerspace, and raw love, thickly, is pumped into me, my antennas up and attuned to the frequency, and my job isn’t to create so much as it is to witness. To be a journalist from a remote location, desperately trying to bring you the news from the front, to let you know, as I am being let known, that you are not alone.
But everyone is different. I can only speak for myself. And what I have seen. It really is beautiful here. And as far as “heres” go, this is the only one I can remember and may be the only one I get. I wish it was easier for me. I wish it was easier for a lot of my friends who suffer as well. I wish it was easier for all the people I don’t know that are suffering and I wish it was easier for all the people who suffered and had to leave because it was too much. A friend said to me yesterday, “You are Love, Nick.” And that may or may not be true to me, but it seems to be to her. I’ll never be the one who makes that distinction. What I would say to you is look around your life, really look, and you’ll find them in your life. The magic ones. The ones likely with one foot out the door. And maybe reach out and tell them how special they are. Because they are probably struggling and could use it. Hell, tell everyone in your life how special they are. Not a lot of that going around these days. We sure could use it.
With Love,
Nick
P.S. Once upon a time, I joined the military to learn how to not quit a job. I was engaged and I had quit every job I ever had in three to four months (except the movie theater because it was awesome being a projectionist). So I did what one does, I went off to basic training and got yelled at about the minutiae of folding my socks and t-shirts. It was raucous, to be sure. And my soul definitely threatened to implode. But, want to know what got me through? Praying. I didn’t really believe all that much, so the praying was actually just asking if I could see my sweet, lovely lady again. And then I found myself, after the prayers were over, writing letters in my head. To her. Every one started with, “Dear A,” and then I’d write to her until I fell asleep. Half way through basic, the guy that slept next to me, he was from NYC and would crush me on the secret chess board every day, he said he would watch me go to sleep. Hands behind my head, relaxed, like I was in a hammock by the ocean. Every night. He asked how I did it. And I told him about the letters to my special lady.
I have not realized until this very moment that this, FTNY, is exactly that. It’s business up front, and then letters. The letters are how I can say what I’m trying to say without being interrupted. Questioned. In the hopes that someone will listen and care. I started by writing letters to my now ex wife each night, then when I got divorced and she was gone, I would write letters in my mind to my brother, almost every day, folding them neatly and sending them into the ether to find him (as he has passed, if you didn’t know), and now I write to you, TNY. Goddamn. Maybe this is how I talk to God, or whomever. I believe in these people, this space. I don’t believe in a God that makes the holocaust, or cancer, or rape, or whatever. You don’t need to destroy us to teach us lessons. The proof is in the children we humans make. They can be taught without giving them diseases that take the “them” out of their vessel and leave a husk. They don’t need sadness so deep and wide they would cut themselves to escape. That’s no god. That’s arrogance.
But, what if someone wrote back? What if someone responded to the, at this point, thousands of letters I’ve written. Wild thought.
