October 26th, 2026 - Appeasement, Ohio
Dear TNY,
“Appeasement, Ohio” is the soup du jour. And I couldn’t help but notice that it’s by Saunders, which forced me, like Lloyd Christmas, to say, “Mmm, that sounds good, I’ll have that.”
But was it good?
Honestly, I don’t know.
In the eight and three quarters years I have been doing this, I have phased in and out of belief that I know what I’m talking about. But as of this point, in the realm of time being a flat circle and it’s already all happened, is happening, and will happen, and it’s the passage of my vessel, or rather the passage of the consciousness inside my vessel, that creates the perception of time, that time itself, passing from point A to point B, me, never experiencing the past, only telling ever-changing stories about it, never experiencing the future, as it is completely unknown until it is known, it then becoming the present, which is the slice of cake that I seem to be perpetually eating, my thriftstore fork cleaving the endmost point off of the wedge-shaped slice, then rotating the tines of the utensil in a perpendicular manner such that I can scoop the heft of the rich, dense dessert up to my yawning gob, as it were, and whilst I close my lips over the forked bite, sliding the metal out in such a way that it cleans the fork, the cake, or the present in this case, regrows the removed bite, the pattern repeating again and again, me, the cake, the fork, the bite, time is a flat circle, forever and ever, Amen, yes, at this point in my life, I don’t think that I know what I’m talking about and I don’t think that I don’t know what I’m talking about either, I know that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know that I know more about what I don’t know that I’m talking about that at least a few people I’ve met, at least two people, maybe at least one, maybe I know that I don’t know what I’m talking about more than at least one person I might have met at a train station in Köln at a Burger King, where my father could not understand the woman at the cash register who was attempting to take his order, and unlike the promised land that America is supposed to be, which it is and it isn’t, there were only four, count them, 1, 2, 3, 4 value meals to choose from, and the woman working the counter was saying, in English mind you, just with a German accent, “What meal would you like, sir?” and my father just kept repeating, “I don’t understand what you are saying,” and there’s me looking at him and looking at her and she’s looking at him and looking at me and I know that she and I are on the same page and my father certainly was not, and he became more and more flustered as the interaction continued, but it was so absurd that the woman and I just let it play out before us, like some bad television programming, the kind of shit you can’t change the channel on even though you know it’s rotting your brain, until such time that, almost in unison, both the woman working the register and myself shouted, “Just say a fucking number between 1 and 4,” and I saw then that although he was a grown ass adult, he was relegated to a small child, one with no understanding of the world, and that two adults had just chastised him for being a moron, as The Dude would say, “in the parlance of our time,” that my father didn’t know something and was made to feel badly for it, yet I still take the side of the woman behind the register as some things are basic level shit, but as I say this I begin to ponder what qualifies as basic level shit and what is more complicated, meant for higher order thinkers, adults and children alike, and the first thing I thought of was the idea that this, all of this, it’s not about you, and the more about you you make it, the more you shit, metaphorically but also possibly literally, on everyone around you, yeah, right now I’m thinking that selflessness and decentralization are absolute basic level shit, because, by concept, they couldn’t be more clear, couldn’t be simpler, couldn’t be more concise, and yet it seems the thrust of humanity, or at least Americans, are moving away from these ideas, something that to me seems as easy as picking 1 through 4 at the Burger King, and so one finds themselves in the minority of people by thinking ideas that are as easy as breathing, or understanding that exploring your partner’s body, both the good and the bad of it, is the whole point of sex, that sex is a giving sport, not a “let’s see what I can get out of this sport”, ideas that are as easy as “shut up and let her talk”, which, to be honest, is sometimes really fucking hard in execution, yeah, the idea there is a simple one but pulling it off is otherworldly sometimes, for a lot of reasons that sometimes prove to be illusive, like a wild animal in the forest just off the trail, buried in fallen leaves, exploring the forest floor for sustenance, and one can hear its movements, out there, making a minor ruckus in the dead and dying vegetation, yet it cannot be seen, only heard, much like the wind, something none of us have ever seen directly, as it’s a miracle that only provides evidence of itself by the objects it moves, and speaking of miracles I am reminded of this quote by Norm MacDonald, “Scripture. Faith. Grace. Christ, Glory of God. Smart man says nothing is a miracle. I say everything is," which, say what you want about God or organized religion, all of that much like assholes and opinions, but I am inclined to agree with Norm in that everything does seem like a miracle, as for so long I was understanding this innately, under the spell of the world but not understanding the spell, but only recently have been able to call its name to its face, to say to the miracle, “I see you and I love you,” which is one of the most beautiful things I have ever encountered, the miracle of perception, that of all the possible outcomes given all the possible data, that I am…that I am, and that on this flat circle of time I could have been placed anywhere, or not at all, yet I was given the gift of being me, at this time, in this place, with these people, and did get what I wanted from this life, even so, to call myself beloved on the earth, to feel myself beloved on the earth, and what more could a person ask for, hmm?
Well, my youngest son just called and interrupted my sentence. But it’s just one sentence, guys. I’ve written a million of them. I’ve only made two sons. I think we can all see what’s important here. What has primacy.
George, what is there to say? This isn’t my favorite of your work. I did find some humor in it. What I was most drawn in by, though, was also something I saw in the Norm MacDonald documentary that I watched last night. In the doc, you can see him talking to his friends, other comedians, and telling these absolute nonsense made up stories and his friends will just egg him on, knowing that it’s all bullshit, knowing he’s just making it up as he goes, his own little inner world, entertaining himself the whole time. That’s what I saw in this, George. It has your fingerprints all over it. I could see your corporeal form sit down in your chair to write, that chair disappear, and then your nebulous form settled into the cracks of this livingroom and you watched these people interact and, for you, it was interesting enough to bring back from the void to show us and say, “Hey! Would you look at this?!” And yeah, man. I did look.
And finally, I’ll end on this note:
Hey. I miss you every day. Day after day. There are a million little tchotchkes I’d like to show you. And I’d like to see yours. More, though, I guess, I’d like to show you what real love looks like as I know you were never shown (which is not your fault and the ache of that hole in your understanding of the world is lodged in my heart to this day); I’d like to show you one of the most beautiful parts of it: forgiveness.
On that note, I love you. I love all of you. I love being here. I love how hard it is. I love how, on top of that hard, I make it even more challenging for myself. I love choosing the wrench. I love your goddamn stupid little faces. I love the sound you make when you snore. I love the way that you sigh when you settle into bed, like every day was the hardest thing you have ever done. I love how you listen to all my idiotic rants and stories. I love how I have sidled up to the understanding that, like Del Griffith, I like me. I love how the older I get, the more me I become, more earnest, more sincere, and less and less afraid of what you think about it, because you are here for it. You know how I know you are here for it? Because you could have stopped reading at any time. Yet you didn’t. I love you for hanging in there with me, seeing this thing through. I love you because you aren’t me, and that’s fascinating. I’ve had enough of me. I could use some more of you. All of you. Come visit, okay? Bring all your tchotchkes and your sadness and your whimsy and your anger and your joy and your small wrists and your thick hair and your grubby toes and the content face that you make when you sleep. All of you, bring everything you’ve got. Come quickly, as we don’t have time to waste. But, and this is the real secret, when you get here, we’ll have all the time in the world. We’ll have absolutely everything you could possibly need. We’ll have each other.
Nick
