May 26th, 2025 - Fairy Pools

Dear TNY,

It’s been two weeks and a lot has happened, and here I sit with you after reading “Fairy Pools”.

And it’s “buns” as my youngest would say.  Not buns in the sense of actual human buns, the way that people say something “blows” or “sucks ass” or what have you.  Those things are actually good.  Buns, as he says and I have corrected him, are good.  Delicious, as a point of fact. 

But in this way, I mean it how he says it, that this story isn’t very good.  It’s chaos.  Which I’m cool with.  Barthelme, an OG slayer.  But this doesn’t do what the wacky must:  break hearts.  In fact, it’s just an arrangement of shock and awe sentences that somehow never create an image or a feeling (and I mean shock and awe like, the sentences are crisp and clear and moving and angular and aggressive).  I kept rereading a lot of the sentences because my brain was like, “this looks like it’s a good sentence, hell, it feels like a good sentence; I should reread it to figure out why.”  But, alas, sometimes after ten reads I still didn’t get what the fucking basic understanding of the sentence was supposed to be.  So then, it must not be good.  And if one strings enough supposedly good sentences together that aren’t actually good, then one can write a story like this.  One where it seems like it should be amazing, but you cannot find a thing in the story that points to said “amazing.” 

I can’t even tell you what happened, guys.  Like, what happened? 

I just got done driving from Grand Junction to Portland.  And I listened to a lot of How Did This Get Made, the podcast.  Weirdly, they focused a lot of production value vs story, and it seemed like the movies they watched suffered the same fate:  This looks like it should be good, but what the fuck is even happening in this story?

Yeah, you heard right.  I’ve moved again.  And I’ll move by Friday.  And then within a week.  And then again and again for the rest of the summer.  The season is upon us.  But one thing is missing:  My oldest son.

He graduated last week.  There was a party.  The party was before graduation and was awkward.  My mother was there.  I haven’t spoken to her (<100 words) since 2020.  I haven’t seen her since before that.  My sister was there as well, with her monster child and her husband.  The party was at my ex’s house.  Then off to graduation where it was a fucking windstorm and hot.  Like, HOT.  But there was my little baby boy, on the edge of his aisle.  Then walking.  Then posing for a photo.  Then his name was called and I yelled as loudly as I could, but he did not hear.  Then he’s back in his seat and texting me.  And then we are out on the field and neither of us know what to say so I hug him and tell him how proud I am of him.  Then his mom’s family comes into view, my mother as well, and I’m standing there watching people fawn over my son and crying and then I got real sad.  So I hugged him and left and…guys everything is fine.  The thing is, lot’s of adult’s lives are defined by things.  Often, those things are children.  And my life has been buffaloed a direction since 2013, since divorce, and I have pivoted and saved and adventured and tried my best to offer something very unique to them.  And my life looks the way it does because of that.  On that field, it was really the first time I had a dose of what it feels like when that era ends.  And it is ending, to be sure.  Monday morning, when I drove away, I had my youngest wake up my oldest (I took my youngest to school, so it was early) so that I could say goodbye to him because…drumroll please…I don’t know when I’ll see him again.  He's off to the sprinkler fitter’s union soon enough, and all that work and pain and sacrifice just kind of…poof-goned.  Not that it’s actually gone, more like it’s been deposited in an investment account that will continue to pay off, but the person who will receive the dividends is him.  But at that moment it seemed like all of it was for naught.  Which I know isn’t true.  That shit is stuck to him like old refried beans. 

I’m rambling.  What I guess I’m trying to say is that life is fucking weird.  I miss my son, even though I just saw him.  I’ll see the other again soon.  Bought his ticket today.  And there’s adventure in the future, for sure.  But I don’t know what any of this means.  And I’m getting fat again.  And I’m fucking tired.

But Chuck slayed.  A thousand flawless miles. Again. I couldn’t believe it. I saw a heron with a snake in the Columbia River Gorge. I saw Mexican cowboys on a sheep roundup in central Idaho. I saw an Amazon dry van trailer smoldering from a very recent fire, the yellow bins and their beloved contents stacked and dripping, the melted plastic a miasma in the air. I saw a VW ID Buzz, their new version of the original bulli or bus. And…it’s a piece of fucking shit. Sure, I’m biased. I’m currently driving the pinnacle of VW busdom and he just rolled over 525,000 kilometers. He’s forded rivers and climbed mountains and held love and carried my sons and myself all over this nation and held food and protected us from a tropical storm in New York and Pennsylvania and outran a thunderstorm in Moab and so many more things than basic bitch machinery never gets to do. Guys, he’s been my family and I love him so deeply. He’s been there for some of the best parts of my life. And he’s alive. Fucking ALIVE.

The Buzz, alternatively, is a corporate dickturd. So that we are clear, a dickturd the a nug of shit that got compacted into the urethra and is pissed out later. Dickturd. As opposed to a dismembered dick being inserted anally and shat out. Although, according to my gay German proctologist friend, once you push it around the corner, it’s not coming out on its own. So don’t! He’s got a shelf in a storage closet at work of items he’s fetched out of people. That’s a fucking essay in itself.

Oh, I think these posts have been lacking recently. Or I have been lacking.  I have strayed away from telling the truth, or it stopped mattering if I documented it or not.  Like, it feels like I’m just slinging shallow shit.  Maybe my brain is dying.  Maybe I forgot how to feel.  Maybe I just got scared.  So I’m going to try to start telling the truth again.  That’s the only way forward.  Especially when I look at the rest of humanity, especially America, especially the modern penchant for always being a victim.  I’m not a victim.  I’m human.  I’m the villain and the hero all wrapped up into one. Maybe I’m you and you are me. Maybe Universal String Theory is right, and we are on the same thread, baby. I don’t know. Regardless, it’s time to start squirting out a little more synovial fluid, raking a little deeper in the muck, unearthing some insight, and drinking a beer while holding up our filthy findings and saying, “huh, would you look at that; wild.”

Still rambling.  Must be all the Red Bulls I had today.  Who knows.

See you next week.

Nick

P.S. I read this story yesterday and I cannot even remember it. So I was either strung out on road days or it’s just shit. Could be either or both.