June 2nd, 2025 - Love of My Days

Dear TNY,

I’m on time again, having just read “Love of My Days”, and it’s fucking beautiful.

That’s not to say that I transcended the plane.  I didn’t cry.  My soul didn’t ache.  This isn’t that kind of beautiful.  But it was beautiful in the way Christina’s World is beautiful.  Like, I couldn’t look away from it.

Here’s a story.

In 2010 I attempted to attend an MFA program and was very curtly cutoff and told that I was interested in applying to the program.  Attendance wasn’t a given.  Fair.  But eat shit, lady.  Be more kind.  Anyway, as I dejectedly stumbled out of the university, I saw a man with wavy salt and pepper hair, or whatever salt and pepper is for gingers, eating his lunch in the common area.  I knew him to be the director of said MFA program from my obsessive perusing of the website.  So I was bold and I flagged his attention, letting him know that I was interested in attending the program but was informed by his underling that I needed an assessment of my writing.  He was so kind and agreed to read some of my work and direct me accordingly.  I emailed him a chapter of a novel I was writing (still a grand idea for a novel and maybe one day I’ll finish it).  I’m 15 years past that date, and I now know how wonderful he was to me when he explained that much of it was overwrought.  Because he could have gutted me like a fish.  But he did this amazing thing where he took a sentence I wrote well, used it as an example, and said why it was so well written.  He also said I belonged in the advanced writing class, which I enrolled in before applying to the program.  In that class, I met two women, one a poet and one a short story writer like I was at the time.  And it was obvious they were my ilk passion-wise.  After the class was over, we kept in touch and started a writing group.  Yes, we were exactly like you think we were.  So eager.  At one of the meetings, the short story writer was telling us this story about her son, and how she knew he was going to be straight (she was lesbian) and she watched lust bloom in his little boy mind.  There was a stack of magazines on one of her endtables and he was running around, as always, and when he would have ordinarily run right past that stack as he had done many times before, he stopped.  And he stared at the magazine on the top, which she couldn’t remember which it was, but she said there was a woman on the cover.  And her son stayed there, just staring.  She noticed and went over to ask him what he was doing.  He turned to her and said something akin to, “I was closing my eyes and opening them again; every time I close my eyes, mom, I can still see her when they are shut.”

That’s how I feel about this story.  I can close my eyes and still see it.  Like it’s burned in there.  That’s good writing.  It helps that the story has a plot, there are no writers in it, and the craft was amazing.  It reads like something Rick Bass wrote.  Or Louis L’Amour.  It just breathes western.  And I’m not totally sure what happened.  The guy maybe was dead and came back to life?  Or not?  What cave did he crawl out of?  He loved the one lady’s sister?  I mean, fuck it.  Who cares.  It was beautiful and I didn’t want to look away.

I’m in Tacoma now and I reskinned my sister’s porch.  Today it rained and I went to meet some people in Seattle I will dogsit for in a couple of weeks.  Bought new boots.  Who cares. 

Who cares, you know?

My oldest son called while I was writing this to say that he may or may not have hit a car behind him while getting out of a parallel parking place.  His first big solo outing in the world.  He’s…fucking darling.  He said to me:  I’m sorry I disappointed you, dad.  I didn’t even say I was disappointed.  He makes my heart hurt.  I love him so much.  I didn’t know when my ex told me that she was pregnant, that I would be slicing a part of my heart off and sending it out into the world.  But that’s it.  That’s exactly what it is.  And I’m so scared.  But excited to see who he becomes.  Knowing, always, that he could break my heart at any time.  And it may not even be his fault; I know that all too well.  My brother didn’t jump in front of the car.  But my mother and father had their hearts fucking ripped out when he died.

I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.

Probably time to depart. 

Great story.  Beautiful to look at.  Recommended.

Nick

P.S. This sentence is fucking immaculate and I wish I had written it: A soundless drench of colors smote Timble.