Letter to K. About Being Just a Regular Guy and the Psychology of That

I know I have an offputting and sometimes conversation-killing tendency to fall silent when someone says something particularly thought provoking. I start thinking about what was just said--and, I guess, about how to respond most laudably--and my thoughts get complicated and I usually end up somewhere in uncertainty and ambivalence and I just don't say anything. This is what I did that night on your porch in Baltimore when we were smoking pipes and drinking rye and mostly talking about something else. So, this letter is me trying to make my uncertain and messy thoughts coherent and to actually respond to what you said.

Which was, more or less: "I am just a regular guy." Which startled me a bit. In my world, your extraordinariness is something crucial. It drew me into your orbit 22 years ago, and, though love holds me there, your extraordinariness is a real and potent and exciting thing. So my habit of equivocation, in which my mind sees it both ways and is almost always stretched between two poles, right away began its dissonant feedback thing. On one side of its aisle it shrieked, not a little desperately, "No, you are not regular. You are extraordinary, and regular is the enemy that is always trying to wrestle us to the ground." But on the other side of its aisle, my mind said "Well, in certain ways you are extraordinary, but I think I know what you mean when you say you're just a regular guy: maybe being regular is simply our baseline state and when we are extraordinary we're just reaching up out of our regular mode, usually in practiced, reliable ways. We've concentrated on certain narrow ways to be remarkable, and we can rely on those ways to attract attention and admiration, etc." So, I sat there half drunk and chilled and thought, "Ok, I guess I sort of understand why K. is insisting that he's just a regular guy, despite his obvious extraordinary wit and inventiveness and psychological insight, etc."

But then, as I sobered up in the shower later, and lay awake in bed for an hour, I remembered where I had recently heard another extraordinary person claim, almost vehemently, that he was just a regular guy. In that really unsatisfying [and probably fundamentally flawed] movie "The End of the Tour," they have David Foster Wallace insist, several times, that he is just a regular guy. The David Lipsky character--a sort of angry, hurt Woody Allen with the bloodsucking drive and instincts of a mosquito--keeps scoffing at this. Lipsky insists that DFW is being coy at best, and certainly disingenuous, and probably dishonest. Lipsky, with beautifully-acted bitterness, holds up Infinite Jest as proof that DFW is extraordinary, the greatest writer of his generation. We see, in one of the few good scenes in the movie, that Lipsky very much wants to be a great writer, and that he has a high opinion of himself, and that it galls him terribly that DFW is much, much greater than Lipsky will ever be, and that he, DFW, has pretty much buried himself in a drab little house and a drab little job in Indiana, and that his life looks totally mundane and lowbrow and unremarkable. The Lipsky character keeps trying to get the DFW character to admit that he is a genius. But he wont.

It occurred to me as I walked home from the theater, like six months ago, that Lipsky had missed the tragic central point of IJ, and that DFW's impatience with Lipsky stemmed largely from Lipsky's blindness to the psychology of addiction. Without unpacking IJ much here, in this letter, I just want to summarize my reading of the whole addiction and 12-step theme in IJ: I think that DFW showed Don Gately and Hal Incandenza in psychological contrast: Gately keeps checking his ego at the door of his recovery. He sees the Crocodiles as prevailing against their addictions inasmuch as they keep the specialness of their individual stories at bay. Gately, the future Crocodile [we hope], has to continually reassert his own human universality against his specialness. He is maybe greatly aided in this by his background as a neglected kid who has never been told he's extraordinary. His recovery depends on his ordinariness. As long as he's a regular guy he stands a chance. And when he is forced to do something heroic, when he protects the residents of Ennet House from the bad Quebecquers, he ends up in extremis.

Hal Incandenza, on the other hand, is pretty much crippled by his specialness. Where Gately was neglected and never thought himself special, Hal was raised by an overweening mother who fed him "mnemonic steroids" and--simplifying here-- made it pretty much clear to young Hal that she would love him inasmuch as he accomplished extraordinary things. He was raised to use extraordinariness to win his mother's love. So, when Hal is forced to quit taking drugs, he faces not just withdrawal, but existential crisis: his ego is tied to the high, or something like that. His extraordinariness, which is what makes him worthy of love, is tied tight to his drugs. Without the drugs he may cease to be special. So Hal is facing something Gately isn't: in quitting drugs he may fall apart. He may no longer be able to maintain his incandescent specialness. He may end up being merely regular.

So I was lying there in bed in Baltimore, listening to the gunshots and sirens down the hill, thinking more clearly than when we were out on the porch half drunk, and I thought maybe I knew what you meant when you told me you consider yourself to be an ordinary guy. I think you know that you have gifts. You shine in certain K.-like ways, and you know you do. Your wit, your verbal inventiveness and agility; your special intimacy with the whole American high-low thing; your strange and super-charismatic way of unenjambing lines in a song so that they scan two or more ways, one funny, one poignant, and so on. Plus, if I may Lipsky for a moment, you have all this other extraordinary stuff: powerful charisma, physical grace, aliveness-to-senses, and, weirdly, even a kind of patience-in-impatience [which gives me hope for my own middle age], etc. I think you know this about yourself, though you don't much talk about being special. I may be totally making this up, but I guess you were raised at least a little like Hal, not so much like Gately. At some point, I hazard, you swallowed the idea that you would get love --or maybe just more love-- if you shone.

For my part, I believe my own childhood was way over on the Hal side. There was neglect, for sure, but it was nothing like how Gately was neglected. I grew up with the idea that I was extraordinary, and that I would get more and better love if I shone. I'm totally still plagued by this, of course. Thank Gawd I seem to have very little propensity for addiction. But I am psychologically crippled in other ways. I see it. I'm sure there's lots I don't see. I know it largely governs the way I live, and that it has manifested most powerfully in my relationship to my work, which is like a shitshow marriage, which is mostly what we were talking about that night. As always, thank you for being so patient with that fucked up shit that I replay endlessly.

Which brings me to intelligence and what I think it is. We, in this culture [maybe not in the world of progressive education, but you guys are special], tend to see intelligence as bandwidth. When we say that Albert Einstein was smart and George W. Bush was stupid, what we mostly seem to mean is that Einstein had fatter, faster wiring and Bush had feeble, sluggish wiring. Given the bell curve, I'm sure there's a real, natural range in humans' processing capacity. And of course there's the effects of trauma, physical and emotional. But a more interesting --and hopeful-- concept of intelligence favors drive over wiring. No proof here, but it seems to me that some people are "smarter" than others because they work at it harder. But I think it's pretty rare that a person sets out in a disciplined and systematic way to become smarter. I think most people we think of as smart became that way because they feel driven to it. And maybe the most widespread source of that kind of drive is what April Incandenza gave to young Hal: the sense that he had to accomplish something to earn her love.

I don't see any reason to believe that the most accomplished people are really all that better-wired than the rest of us. But they do seem to be more driven, narcissistic, and neurotic. Where does that come from? Probably from a middle-class parenting culture that attaches love to accomplishment. Tiger Moms. Lecturing dads. Hectoring grown-ups pushing kids and withholding affection or approval when kids are lazy.

I think it's probably true that all healthy kids enter the world with roughly the same mental capacity, roughly the same wiring. Some get a little better equipment, others a little weaker, but almost all of us are born with more or less equally capable brains. At that point, some brains are probably starved for stimulation, such as when a single mom has to be away working at Burger King all day, and other brains are well fed, sent to the best schools and lessons. Some kids, lots of them middle-class with college-educated parents, immediately start learning that their worth, their lovability, is a function of their achievement, and they learn that certain things they do make their parents smile and hug and coo and celebrate. So the kids focus on those things. And, lo, they become more and more proficient, and they earn more and more attention and approval, and the feedback loop propels them into college, and a career, and a specialty, and they become known as smart. So, in this model, accomplished is lovable is smart, and the whole package is a strongly-reinforced delusion.

The self-narration of smart is "I am special," but smart people did not start special, and I have heard very little said about what appears to be a plain fact: if you spend 15 years working hard at becoming a heart surgeon, you will be a heart surgeon, and people will say of you "That guy is smart. He is a heart surgeon." Any regular human intelligence, focused long and sharply enough, leads to the kind of accomplishment that is seen as smart, even if only a few people know what it is you do.

Thinking this way, it seems to me that insisting on being a regular guy isn't just good, healthy American populism. It's also an acknowledgment of privilege, a humility about accomplishment and how unextraordinary it is to become really good at something when you spend years working on it, and a refusal to race in the lemming-rush of specialness, which does not, after all, land us in Mom's Lap of Love, but just down there at the bottom of the cliff. I'm being sloppy and silly here, but really: being the smartest guy in the room, the most special, does not come with love. Even the respect is often grudging. And, furthermore, feeling special can exempt us, in our own minds, from being decent, loving, present, and even happy.

The tragedy of Hal mirrors the possible redemption of Gately. Hal's specialness exempts him from the real work. It makes his difficulties feel personal, and it makes his accomplishments feel existential. Hal exists, in his own mind, only inasmuch as he maintains his specialness. The pressure is on Hal to keep deserving love. Poor, neglected Gately, on the other hand, the regular guy, has a chance. He doesn't feel special, so he is free to admit he's a fuck up. He can really own that. From there, he can look up. The sea was way out. A good read of IJ, in light of DFW's history with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, and in retrospect now that we know he killed himself, is that he saw himself as Hal, but he knew that beating both the depression and the addiction depended on becoming Gately. Alcoholics Anonymous holds, at its very heart, the apparently-paradoxical principle that recovery requires the burial of specialness. There can be no special exemptions in our recovery because we have to recover as humans. We can't recover as special cases deserving of special recognition and special status. Humility, I guess, is the only way. In this model, it is the ego that is depressed and addicted, not the subsumed infant of pure potential, not the regular guy.

Now, of course I am not saying that this is what you meant. I'm just suggesting that I found a happy congruence in what you said and what DFW said. In my mind, at least, you both uttered occult wisdom. Maybe you meant something else, but let me point out that you said something super-wise even if you meant something else, and that I must be super-special for recognizing that. After all, this little essay is a performance, and I want you to think highly of me, because I respect you because you are extraordinary. But not exempt.

The Fall

From where I sat I could hear only the sibilants and fricatives, the blown leaves of their conversation. A bit of voice like a glimpse of leg. Mostly those rustling esses and rattling tees. The limb gets pretty hard. I worried they'd see my feet dangling there over the patio, but it was dark.

This is good, I’m sure he said. He made a stabbing motion with his knife at the steaming contents of his plate.

So glad you like it! The way she spoke she could only be smiling: her voice high in the throat, slightly fluting, bright. Her face was in shadow but I could hear she was smiling. Recently, the advertising they play over the sound system in the grocery store features intensely-smiling female voices. The voice actors sound like they have great teeth, American grins. They sound like they are exquisitely happy about fat-free yogurt or what have you.

I wished I had put on a sweater.

He said appreciative things about the food, which smelled very good. His body performed the sanctioned poses: heroic positions of the torso, shoulders, and arms; ostensibly languorous attitudes of the legs, hips, and abdominal trunk that actually require considerable flexing; constant adjustments of the angle of the head relative to the position of hers, always mindful of the most flattering angle of the light streaming across the table from the kitchen behind them. My theory is that we learn this from the media, and it is an aspect of fashion. The self-consciousness of his performance of the current manhood subverted his intended projection of virility, IMHO.

Her movements were also highly practiced, pretty and delicate, graceful and equivocally coy, and, though the wind picked up a little and hissed through the tree and I couldn’t hear much of what she said, I could hear, distinctly, that her voice was pitched high and that it rose at the end of each sentence almost like a question, but not exactly. Every sentence rolled onto its back. This is a form of deference, or perhaps submission, and therefore potentially dominant, and I have theories about this, that there is a sociobiological basis for this kind of feminine behavior. It is a way that women make themselves available to men. It is a method of flattery and, therefore, control. I am tempted to say it is a way of lying, or, perhaps, a form of honesty. This will require more thought.

The voice actor who reads the tortilla ads uses the hard r’s and soft d’s of Spanish. Her vowels are unitary and precise, very unlike the broad diphthongs of American English. She sounds very nearly overwhelmed by the pleasure of urging us to buy the tortillas. Euphoric, or giddy. I predict that these women, these voice actors, will soon figure out a way to suggest, just to the limit of decency, that they are actually enjoying a barely-contained orgasm brought on by the product they’re selling. I’ll have what she’s having, they want us to think. Oh, so that’s her secret! And it’s on sale today! Commerce depends on the cynical re-purposing of sex, of course.

After some time, he pushed his plate away. They stayed on the patio, drinking beer and leaning into each other with the unmistakable movements of what I will call new love, which is lust. Each movement profoundly gendered: her graceful arms, elbows in tight, wrists exposed, hands birdlike; his arms possessive, his chest forward and massive.

He said something sly and turned his head to watch her eyes. She laughed rather abruptly and her shoulders rose and she placed her hands on his bicep. She threw her head back to laugh, and placed one balletic hand on her upper chest, as though she couldn’t get a deep breath because what he said what so amusing. He leaned back in his chair and straightened his legs out in front of him and hooked a thumb in his pocket so that his hand framed his package. All these movements had the canned flavor of recitation. My theory is that the highest-status young people practice these gendered movements in the mirror. They must consume media with a voracious attention to gender display, desperate to learn how to present themselves for mating.

I have heard very few male voice actors reading ads in the grocery store. Men do many of the in-store announcements, but the ads the male voice actors read are mostly for meat and barbecue products. Also, men read the ads for the gas-discount rewards program. These are prescribed male roles. The male voices are enthusiastic, but, whereas the women’s voices verge on rapture, the male voices verge on command. Pert girls sell salad greens. Kindly but authoritative fathers sell charcoal and beef.

She played with her hair. She spoke and the wind rose at that moment so that I was able, again, to entertain the idea that the breeze emanated from her mouth, that she made the leaves rustle and the branches rattle. I saw her teeth backlit white against the kitchen window.

That's all. They went inside after a while, and watched TV. He put his arm on the back of the couch behind her. She retracted her hands inside the cuffs of her sweater, hunched her shoulders, tucked her feet, and made herself small. And I slipped down out of the tree and walked back here to my warm, bright little apartment suspecting that I had witnessed what I need to know, that it would require some thought and parsing, but that the leaves would eventually blow off the tree and leave the trunk bare and plain, and there’d be nowhere to hide.

Elena Ferrante is Cormac McCarthy!

"...diffuse at first and then growing ever denser..."

“…I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the wall, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one’s power. It was as if an illness that had been latent in me for a long time were now threatening to erupt, as if some soul-destroying and inexorable force had fastened upon me and would gradually paralyze my entire system. I already felt in my head the dreadful torpor that heralds disintegration of the personality, I sensed that in truth I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even any existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes… The entire structure of language, the syntactical arrangement of parts of speech, punctuation, conjunctions, and finally even the nouns denoting ordinary objects were all enveloped in impenetrable fog… Especially in the evening twilight, which had always been my favorite time of day, I was overcome by a sense of anxiety, diffuse at first and then growing ever denser, through which the lovely spectacle of fading colors turned to a malevolent and lightless pallor, my heart felt constricted in my chest to a quarter of its natural size, until at last there remained only one idea in my head: I must go… and throw myself over the banisters into the dark depths of the stairwell. It was impossible for me to go and see any of my friends, who were not numerous in any case, or mix with other people in any normal way. The mere idea of listening to anyone brought on a wave of revulsion, while the thought of talking myself, said Austerlitz, was perhaps worse still, and as this state of affairs continued I came to realize how isolated I was and always have been…I was as ill at ease among artists and intellectuals as in bourgeois life, and it was a very long time since I had felt able to make personal friendships. No sooner did I become acquainted with someone than I feared I had come too close, no sooner did someone turn toward me than I began to retreat. In the end I was linked to people only by certain forms of courtesy which I took to extremes and which I know today… I observed not so much for the sake of their recipients as because they allowed me to ignore the fact that my life has always, for as far back as I can remember, been clouded by an unrelieved despair… I began my nocturnal wanderings… to escape the insomnia which increasingly tormented me.”

̶ W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, pp. 123-126

My Dog Is a Racist

My dog, a small, rather cute all-black mutt I rescued from a teenaged couple who neglected her badly, is generally sweet, but she is a racist. She hates black men. Everyone asks, "Did a black man ever beat her?" and I always answer "No, I doubt it. I think it's just because she's not used to dark skin."

I walked her through the park the other day. About twenty young men were playing soccer on their lunch break. Nineteen of the men were Caucasian or pale, and one was black. My dog ran into the middle of the game to confront the lone black man. She headed him off and stood barking at him. He looked at her, incredulous, spread his arms, and said "Take a look in the mirror, Sister."

Hans and Grete

Late in the summer Johannes and Margarete drove north out of the city, an hour before sunrise to avoid the worst of the traffic. The early morning was chill and damp, and they left the top up. Margarete drove, as always. Johannes sat back and scrolled through the music options on his phone, but after some time he sighed and put it away and they drove on in silence, every so often gossiping a little about friends and old lovers. He sipped coffee. She had chai. They kvetched about their co-workers. Her new assistant was competent but socially clueless and dressed a little slutty. The new associate in his firm was cute and fun, but lazy and too young, a disappointment. She had never heard him describe a potential partner as too young. Finally accepting middle age? she asked, smiling. Fuck you, he said, with a dramatic pout, then squeezed her shoulder. They drove out beyond the suburbs to where the country opened into farmland. As the sun rose over the hills the dew vanished from the fields and the air became balmy.

They stopped at a dingy clapboard service station. Johannes wrapped a blue paper towel around the grip of the pump nozzle and filled the tank, standing well back from the stinking hose, like a matador dodging the bull, Margarete thought. She touched up her makeup in the visor mirror and took a selfie of them in front of the grimy gas pump with its illiterate hand-written admonitory notes, and he posed with his smirk, the one she knew meant See what I have to tolerate? The sky was flawless. Margarete put the top down, put on her sunglasses, and tied her scarf over her hair and under her chin. A new Hermès Tyger Johannes hadn’t seen. He felt a moment of jealousy that she had gone shopping without him. He pushed a stray strand of her glossy black hair up under the scarf. He put a dab of sunscreen on her upturned palm and they did their faces.

They left the highway and drove up into the mountains and lakes. The maples and beeches gradually gave way to hemlock and pine. The valley narrowed, and each village was shabbier, smaller, and more remote than the last. The clean air brought them the smells of pine, then hay, then the barnyards of dairies. In the early afternoon they stopped by a pretty lake and, while Margarete vinyasa-ed through a few asanas on the narrow beach, Johannes spread out the car blanket on a soft patch of fallen pine needles and set out the lunch he had prepared. On his grandmother’s Reichenbach china he placed slices of frittata and a simple salad of late-summer greens, lightly dressed with vinaigrette. On a small wooden board he had found in an antique store he laid out, just so, a sliced rustic loaf and a bowl of burrata and bitter green olive oil. He poured them each a half-glass of chilled Sancerre. It’s a little too cold, love, he said. It’s delightful, she said, and smiled over her glass at him, and they sipped.

They checked the map. They had poor reception this far into the hills. Late in the afternoon they turned onto a narrower, rougher road over which the trees arched almost low enough to touch. The road dropped into a valley. Fallen stone walls quartered the second-growth forest. He asked, How old do you suppose these trees are? At least a hundred years, I should think, she said. They can’t have farmed this valley since the Civil War.

After a while, the road did not look familiar. He remembered it opening suddenly into broad pastures with a magnificent view across the lakes far below, but the road wound through the crowding trees far longer than he thought it would. He re-read the instructions. They were out of cell range. They stopped and debated. They put the top up and put on sweaters. They laughed when they saw each other’s new sweaters, both in the same shade of primrose yellow. They had seen the same photo-spread in a magazine. They had been best friends for years now. Over twenty years, as a matter of fact. They’d met when she was freshly separated from her then-husband, a partner in the firm Johannes used to work for. They were the same age, and enjoyed the same things: beautiful clothes, fitness, fine meals, posh hotels, weekends in the country. They even had similar taste in men, though they didn’t let their partners keep them apart. They passed as a couple.

It was dark well before sunset. The trees were like a tunnel. They drove on under barely a glimpse of sky. Right before sunset the trees opened and they felt a moment of elation, but it was not the pasture he remembered. Instead, they found themselves crossing a gorge. What at first they had thought was a field was, in fact, the tops of the dark spruces that rose out of the gorge to just the level of the road. As far as they could see to the west the trees rose in swells to the far horizon. On the far side of the gorge the road was so badly washed out that they barely managed to get the car through. God damn it, Johannes muttered. Under the dome light they huddled around the map, but they could not account for the length of their drive in the woods. Hansy, love, the road has got to go somewhere, she said. He just sulked and waved her onward. They drove on into the night. They couldn’t see anything beyond the white light of the headlights.

Late, well after they would have finished supper, they came to a fork in the road. To the right the dirt road continued. To the left, a narrow lane dropped into the dark. The lane was little more than two ruts between which tall fireweed and thistles stood, as though no car had passed that way all summer. She followed the road to the right, until Johannes suddenly gripped her knee. As the headlights swung around the bend, they had illuminated a freshly-painted sign nailed to a tree. She stopped, almost skidding, and backed to the sign. Gingerbread Cottage, it read, in colorful, hand-painted, looping script, and an arrow pointed down the lane to the left. I am not driving down that, she said. Grete, dear, he said, we can’t just drive all night. We should just stop and ask for directions. Or maybe it’s a passable B and B. She sighed and rolled her eyes. But she turned down the lane.

The weeds scraped the bottom of the low car, but the ruts were smooth. Shortly, the trees quit, and the sky opened above them. They couldn’t see over the old stone walls, but they had the impression of driving between open pastures. Their hearts lightened. They passed massive old sugar maples every so often along the lane, but they saw no sign of a house. The lane went back into the trees and climbed steeply for a while, and the ruts became rocky and rough. Finally, off through the ancient trees, they saw a light, yellow and inviting. They came to a weathered gate in the stone fence. They could not see a driveway, so they parked the car and got out into the chill night. Insects whirred in the dark, but there was no other sound. Johannes looked in the glovebox for the flashlight Grete kept there, but it wasn’t there. They put on jackets and used their phones to light the way to the gate. They pushed through and found themselves on a narrow and deeply-worn path, banked with moss, that meandered off through the trees toward the light. They walked for some time, but the light did not come into clear view. They came to a huge log that had been hewn to form a narrow bridge above a deep little stream. They walked on into the trees. God damn it, Hans said. This is just ridiculous. How far from the road can a person live?

Shush, hun, she said. But then she said, I vote we turn back and sleep in the car. Grete, dear, he said, I’m so sorry. Shush, she said.

But just as they turned to go back to the car a wonderful aroma came to them through the forest. He discerned roasting lamb. She smelled caramelized sugar. Their senses became very alert. Apple wood, he said. She said, Cider vinegar. They turned toward the yellow light and continued on their way, now eager, stumbling now and then, in their fine shoes, on the mossy roots of trees, but heedless of the discomfort. He took her hand to step over a thick root. They stepped between closely-spaced trees onto a flat stone, like a mossy threshold. They smelled roses and lavender, goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace, dill and fennel. Ahead of them a pair of narrow sash windows glowed warmly in the night, faintly illuminating the tops of riotously-competing perennial flowers and herbs, through which the path led directly to the front door.

They looked at each other in the candle-glow of the windows and laughed out loud, delight broad on their smooth faces. Like a couple, they strode to the front door hand in hand.

As they approached the door they saw into the house. A long, low room spanned by massive timber beams, from which dozens of tarnished copper pots, of all shapes and sizes, hung from hooks. And, like an inverted winter garden, whole bushes of dried herbs hung above a long butcher-block island. A hulking masonry stove took up most of one wall. In it a hardwood fire raged on one side, and banked coals were raked to the other. A slate sink overflowed with dirty dishes and pots. At the far end of the room there was a long, black, roughly-hewn trestle table surrounded by maybe twenty mismatched chairs. One end of the table was draped with a snowy linen, on which three elaborate place-settings of bone china, polished silver, and crystal gleamed in the glow of a dozen tapers. Perhaps a hundred candles lit the room, from polished sconces and candlesticks of iron and silver, from hurricane lanterns and crystal vases, from a huge menorah and a long trough-like platter of maybe Asian design, and from where someone had simply stuck them in puddles of wax here and there, wherever there was space. On the stove several pots steamed. The complex smells of cooking reached them at the door, where the smoke from an immense chimney flowed down the steep slate roof and into the fecund garden.

Grete reached for the door. It swung inward before she touched the knocker. Warmth and rich aromas and golden light flowed out the door like a rug unfurled. In the sudden glow stood a tiny woman. Her great mane of curly grey hair fell below her waist. Her broad, creased face looked up at them, and she smiled deeply. She stood no taller than a child, a foot shorter than willowy Grete. Her body was compact and strong. Her muscular legs and body and her very large round breasts were clearly backlit through an unseasonal light linen dress. The woman smiled up at them for a moment, sighed with what must have been deep contentment, and stood aside, indication with a dramatic flourish of her thick, bare arm that they should enter.

We’re so sorry to intrude, Hans began, but the woman interrupted. Please, please. Come in. Just throw your jackets and stuff on the chair there. Please, make yourselves at home.

Grete extended her hand. Margarete, she said. Pleased to meet you, said the little woman. Do you go by Grete? Startled, Grete replied, Yes, I do. My friends call me Grete. Then I will call you Grete, said the woman. If that’s ok. Certainly, Grete said, though she had not allowed this familiarity with any stranger since she was a child.

Hans did not like to shake hands. As he stood behind Grete and helped her out of her jacket, he nodded to the woman and said, Thank you so much for having us in. I’m Johannes. But Please. Call me Hans. The woman rocked up on her toes and back on here heels, a surprisingly childlike movement. She clasped her hands in front of her in delight. Come in the kitchen, she said. Supper is almost ready.

Wondering, Hans and Grete followed as the woman almost jogged into the kitchen, spinning on her bare heels to make sure they were following. She went to the stove and stirred an enormous soup pot, standing up on her toes to reach over the rim, which was well above her head. She stuck a finger into each of several saucepans and tasted each. Without looking, she reached up and plucked a leaf of a dried herb and rubbed it into a saucepan. She reached into the stove and, with her bare hands, grabbed a thick brand and moved it under the saucepan, and flames leapt up and shone through her dress, outlining her figure. In glimpses as she worked, Hans saw her face, smooth and youthful in the lights reflected off the copper pots. He seemed to have misjudged her age.

Hans opened his mouth to speak, but the woman spun toward them and produced, as though from nowhere, a plate of hand-formed crackers and preserved fruit and glistening fresh cheese. She pushed it to them across the scarred wood of the island, and when they raised their eyes from it she had placed before them slender glasses of effervescent wine. She held up one of her own, smiling at them. Her whole face furrowed when she smiled, and deep lines radiated like beams from her eyes. They picked up their flutes, and they reached over the island and the crystal rang. The ringing seemed to deepen and reverberate through the room, rising above the roar of the fire and the bubbling of the pots. A huge cat stretched out from under the island and put a paw on Hans’ shoe and looked up at him with yellow eyes. To friendship, the woman said, with laughter in her voice. Cheers, said Hans and Grete in unison, and they drank.

The wine filled the room with the rich smell of yeast, or of toasted bread, and with a memory of fall orchards, and with the musk of grapes and the warmth of wool. Hans and Grete found themselves sitting at the end of the table facing the woman as she worked in the kitchen. She moved very quickly, with a fluidity and certainty that reminded Hans of the great pianists, and Grete of ballet, which she hadn’t danced in so many years. The long room glowed, and each candle stood straight and did not waver, and the plumes of heat they produced climbed without agitation to the coffered ceiling. The heat of the room grew and enveloped them, but did not become oppressive. The cat climbed onto Hans’ lap. You don’t like cats! Grete said, and the three of them laughed.

Hans gazed at Grete as he never had except when he thought she didn’t know he was looking. He admired the shape of her, her slender shoulders and upright bearing, the tautness of the skin across her forehead and around her eyes, the stylish cut of her shining black hair. She looked tired but radiant. She looked well-tended, he thought. Well-preserved, youthful and fit and polished. He knew how much work and attention it took her to look so fresh.

Hans fell into a reverie, and he thought of the long day driving, and he tried for a moment to reconstruct in his mind the route they had driven, but as he drank a warm convexity of good will rose in him, and the worry and irritation of the day stopped clamoring and grew faint. He looked up and studied the sturdy shape of the woman in her thin dress. He saw that the pots and dishes that had been piled in the sink were now in the drainboard, shining in the candle-light. He had not noticed her washing. He stood and said, I’m just sitting here enjoying this marvelous champagne and not lifting a finger. The woman spoke over her shoulder, Please. Sit. Everything is taken care of. A fragrance reached his nose, earthen, herbal, grassy. He looked down to find a small bowl of creamy soup in front of him, and a plate of toast, still smoking from the stove. A thick, lumpen bottle stood before them, and their white-wine glasses were filled with an almost amber wine. They raised their glasses to each other, and the woman was suddenly there. To our hostess, Hans said, and Grete spoke a heartfelt Amen. Hans could not remember such warmth in his best friend’s voice.

Grete had not eaten rich food in years, but she felt something like lust when she smelled the soup. She ate it quickly, for once unconcerned with delicacy or manners. The wine was tart and acidic, the soup was thick and creamy, and the two complemented each other in strange and subtle ways, so that Hans and Grete both leaned forward and greedily spooned the soup into their mouths with their right hands and sipped, and then gulped, the wine with their left hands. Soon, they scraped their bowls clean with scraps of toast and finished the wine.

As they looked up, the woman pulled out the third chair and sat to Hans’ right, across from Grete. She poured a ruby wine into their Burgundy glasses. In front of each of them was a plate of sliced roasted meat arrayed on a fragrant purée blanche. The woman passed a saucier and ladle. They raised their glasses to the candles. Spectacular, said Grete. Lovely, said Hans. A pleasure, said the woman, and they drank, at first sipping, and then in gulps between mouthfuls of meat. The sauce informs the wine, if it’s not foolish to say it that way, said Grete. Indeed, said Hans. A perfect pairing. The meat was pink in the middle, the same hue as the wine. The outer edges of the meat were almost as dark as the cat that purred on Hans’ lap. As they ate in reverent silence, the purée released the steam of potatoes and onions, celery root and parsnip, white pepper and the sweetest butter. When Hans set down his fork, his plate clean, the woman reached out and took his hand and squeezed it. He realized that he was holding Grete’s hand, too.

Grete noticed with a start that she had not been thinking. She imagined herself in an embrace. The warmth of the room extended deep into her and released her from her obligation to sit straight. She looked around the room. Everything glowed in the candlelight. For the first time she saw shelf upon shelf of dark-bound books ranked along the wall behind the table. She was a great lover of books; how could she have missed these hand-bound volumes, perhaps a thousand of them, their embossed titles reflecting richly the light of the hundred candles? She felt a tear move down her cheek. She became aware of the dry warmth of Hans’ hand enveloping hers. She looked at him, so handsome and perfectly groomed, so burnished and well-muscled. Their eyes met, and Hans looked at her, or into her, with a soulfulness she had never seen before in all the years they had been best friends.

The warmth of the room grew. As one, they pushed their chairs back from the table and pulled their sweaters over their heads. Hans took them into the front room. When he turned back he saw that several cats were curled on the other chairs. Their tails hung and twitched. He looked at Grete, who always had such perfect posture. She was leaning back in her chair, and had one cashmere-stockinged foot under her. When he looked to the other end of the room, to the kitchen, he saw that the woman was standing in front of the stove, with a hip rocked out and her hand on her hip holding a long spoon, like a girl posing as a housewife. She was looking at him, directly in his eyes, smiling. He could not hold her gaze, but blew her a drunken kiss of gratitude and returned to the table, dimly aware that he was staggering.

The woman opened another misshapen, unmarked bottle. The cork looked like a ragged hank of oak-bark dipped in beeswax. This wine was very dark, almost black. Malbec? he asked. Oh, no, the woman said, almost laughing. Nothing so exotic. I don’t know what they call these grapes. Just the black ones that grow well here. You made this wine? Hans asked. Yes, she said. Years and years ago.

They sat without food for some time, sated, in silence. The wine was pungent, dark and earthy. It seemed to all three of them that their earliest childhoods unspooled from the wine. As it opened in the air, the wine revealed deeper and deeper complexities, layer upon layer of encoded memory. Hans thought of his mother, alone now in the city. He thought of her much younger, cleaning his face with a washcloth, the smell of her close around him. For a moment he thought he saw the face of his father, whom he could not remember. Grete thought of the summer place on the Cape, when she was a girl. A long-dormant image arose in her of a local boy, shirtless, tilling the family vegetable garden on the first warm day of spring. She closed her eyes and felt next to her the warm presence of her horse Ezra, the tall warmblood given to her by her father for her sixteenth birthday. She smelled the leather of the tack and the musk of the arena. The little woman’s thoughts drifted deep into the forest, into the glade of elephantine beeches, where she had been most content as a girl, daydreaming alone on the moldering leaves.

Hans and Grete sat back from the table, drifting in and out of formless thoughts. The sounds from the woman’s work in the kitchen barely reached them, as though they were under deep, warm water. Time passed unmarked. They revived to the smell of hot butter and burned sugar as the woman placed before them a smoking tarte Tatin. She cut it with a knife of black steel, and the caramelized sugar cracked, and the brown syrup of pears spread across their plates. She spooned sweet cream over their portions. They found small glasses of a honey-hued wine in front of them. It was sweet and acidic and right.

In the morning Grete awoke to the crowing of roosters and the clanging of steel pails outside the window. The sun came in low and pink. She was in a low, plain room of timber and plaster. The wall she could see from where she lay on her side was covered with books, from the floor to the ceiling, many hundreds of them. She stretched and felt her naked skin against flannel. Her exposed arm was cold in the air from the open window. She pulled it under the sheet and brushed against warmth. She turned over and, after a moment of incomprehension, was horrified to find Hans in bed next to her, his evenly-tanned and muscular shoulder bare, his broad back to her. She looked around for her clothes. She found them within reach, neatly folded on a Morris chair by her side of the bed. As quickly as she could without waking Hans, she dressed under the covers. She glimpsed him there naked beside her. She slipped out of bed and out into a hall. She opened doors looking for a bathroom, but found only pantries, several of them, full to the beams with food. Ranked jars of brightly-colored vegetables and fruits, sacks of flour, bins and barrels, hams and sausages hanging, mesh bags of dried mushrooms, many hundreds of bottles of wine, great carboys of cider, bins of apples and pears, piles of root vegetables.

With trepidation and shame, she stepped into the kitchen. The woman, her cheeks bright and red from the chill morning, wearing the same dress and tall muddy boots, smiled up at her and handed her a mug of coffee. Grete hadn’t had coffee in years, but the smell of it comforted her immediately. She accepted it gratefully and drank it standing by the window looking out over mist-shrouded pastures, small barns, fenced yards where goats chewed and horses stood alert and chickens scratched. The forest stood all around this idyll like a black wall.

Some time later Hans came out, looking more disheveled than Grete had ever seen him. He smiled at her. How did you sleep? he asked. She felt herself blush. What’s wrong? he asked. She stammered something he couldn’t hear. He looked concerned. I don’t even remember going to bed, he said, and laughed abruptly. Quite a night. She set down her coffee and covered her face with her hands and turned away from him. Grete, love. What’s wrong? I am so embarrassed, she said. Why? Because of all the drinking? You didn’t do anything silly, he said. No, not the drinking. Not the drinking per se. Just waking up like that. Like what? What happened? he asked. The woman bustled back in, bringing the chill with her, hauling a pail of eggs in one hand, and a pail of frothy milk in the other. She set them down and poured Hans a mug of coffee.

As she strode out the mudroom door, the woman spoke over her shoulder, rather brusquely, Let’s get this day rolling, my friends. She grabbed a stack of baskets and headed out to the garden. They finished their coffee standing, then followed her out. She was bent at the waist picking greenbeans. Her hands moved very quickly. We’d better change out of these travelling clothes, Hans said, as lightly as he could. She waved them off, frankly irritated. Hans went across the garden, between the twinned great beech trees, and jogged up the path. It twisted more than he remembered. It forked here and there, so that twice he had to backtrack. After some minutes he arrived at the car. He got their overnight bags and went back to the cottage as quickly as he could. They looked again for a bathroom, but found only the pantries and the one bedroom. Where the hell is she keeping the bathroom? Grete asked. Well, where did you go this morning? He asked. I didn’t find one. And where did you sleep? There’s only this one bedroom, where I slept, he said. Hans? she said. What, ma chère? I slept with you, she said. What? I slept with you, in the one bedroom. Here.

They took their turns brushing their teeth and washing their faces in the kitchen sink, and trying to straighten their hair without a mirror. They changed into walking clothes and went out to help in the garden. They picked beans and tomatoes and dug carrots and other roots neither of them could name. When they delivered the heaping baskets to the kitchen, the woman had bread and fresh cheese and fruits and a salad on the table. They ate in silence. As soon as they were done, the woman showed them to the berry patch, and for an hour they picked raspberries. Their hands were raw and their forearms were scratched. In the kitchen, they washed the berries and the woman cooked them in a copper kettle, adding sugar by the handful. They helped ineptly. When they were slow setting up the Mason jars and pressure cooker, the woman was visibly peeved, but they focused on the work and did it as quickly as they could. In the middle of the afternoon, out in the orchard picking up fallen green apples for the pigs, Hans said, I think we’ve paid for the meal by now, don’t you? Grete said, Let’s make a polite departure. Let’s find her something in the trunk for a thank-you present, and ask how to get ourselves un-lost, and get out of here well before dark.

But when they found her by the chicken coop, the woman handed Grete a digging fork and asked her, or told her, to turn the compost pile. She beckoned Hans to follow her and led him inside. He looked back over his shoulder apologetically, and Grete shook her head in disbelief. Once inside, the woman handed Hans a bottle of cider and told him to sit. He sat in a big padded chair and the woman said, You can rest now. Grete and I will finish up and then start supper. He felt guilty and confused, but he sat in the chair and drank the cider. Soon, he fell asleep and dozed the rest of the afternoon, nodding in the chair.

Blisters formed on Grete’s hands, and her back ached. Years of Yoga and Pilates had not prepared her for this hard work, but, once she found a sustainable rhythm, she fell into a kind of trance. She stood up on the fork to push it into the redolent, raw kitchen scraps and manure, then stood down and pulled the handle of the fork back to her, then twisted the handle to turn over the clod. She found the exertion pleasant, and watched the sun move up the wall of trees until the woman appeared by her, nodded approvingly, and said, Time to make supper. They went into the house.

While Hans napped on the chair, Grete cleaned a big pile of mushrooms the woman had apparently just brought in from the forest. She worked quickly, sitting on a stool at the butcher-block island. The smell of earth and leaf-mold filled the kitchen. The woman sorted the growing pile of clean mushrooms. Fat gray ones in one pile; big, graceful yellow ones in another; small, very delicate bluish ones and pink ones with furled edges. When Grete finished cleaning the mushrooms, the woman handed her a hand-blown glass of brown liquor. She smelled it. Calvados? Jack, the woman said. Pear jack. It was smooth and intense and pleasantly hot. The late afternoon took on a kind of golden unreality. She lost track of how many glasses of jack she sipped. She moved fluently, almost automatically, as though she had some deep program in her guiding her movements. She chopped squash and eggplants, blanched peas, butterflied a chicken, and cored tomatoes as though she had done it many times, though she had always avoided cooking. She had been eating out for many years. 

The sun went down. They drank a bottle of red wine. Hans started awake from his long nap just as the woman finished assembling a salad of frisée, fresh goat cheese, rabbit sausages, candied walnuts, and currants. The woman guided her to the table with her hand on the small of her back. They drank a sharp, mineral white wine, nearly colorless, with the salad. They drank a heavier golden wine with the roast chicken and mushrooms. After sitting in the warm light of the candles for a while, the woman moved a plate of cheeses in front of them. It had been there all along, but they hadn’t seen it. They drank the same ink-black wine they’d had the night before.

In the morning, Grete awoke to the crowing of roosters and the clanging of the steel pails. She opened her eyes to the simple room, with its shelves of books. She quieted her breathing and focused her senses on the presence behind her. She could feel his heat radiating across the space between them under the blankets. His breathing was soft and even. She felt the flannel sheets against her naked skin. She felt three days’ stubble on her legs snag the sheets as she moved cautiously and dressed herself in the half-dark. She searched her memory for folding her clothes, but the night was foggy. She could remember the hours of work in the kitchen and each course of the meal, but the later hours of the long evening were out of focus, remote, muddled, no doubt, by the alcohol. She could retrieve no memory at all of getting up from the table, getting ready for bed, getting in bed, or of Hans doing any of these things either. Certainly, she thought, No matter how drunk I was, I would never undress with Hansy in the room, and I can’t imagine that he would undress with me around.

She drank her coffee standing. She went out to the barn to explain that they had to leave, but somehow found herself sitting and learning how to milk the cow, and then the goats. The woman disappeared, and presently Grete heard the sound of wood being chopped and stacked, and the woman returned and the chopping continued. It was after noon before she saw Hans. They ate in near silence. Grete drank coffee. The woman handed Hans a bottle of cider. He sat and drank it and soon fell asleep.

Hours again that afternoon and into the evening Grete and the woman worked in the kitchen, and for hours the three ate and drank until the golden light and the warmth of the stove and the ecstatic glow of the wine drew a scrim over their thoughts and they slept.

Once, passing each other at the twinned beeches, they planned to leave. They went down the path, figured out the forking way to the car, closed the gate behind them, and found that a large tree had fallen across the road. Hans spent hours chopping it with an axe, but made little progress. He had no aptitude for labor. His hands were blistered and bruised. In the afternoon he quit, had a bottle of cider, and napped til supper.

One morning Hans woke before Grete. He turned and found her there by him. He studied her in the half-light. She looked old. The skin of her neck had loosened since her facelift. Her hair was coming in white at the part, and looked dry and, frankly, unfashionable. He felt his face, now covered in a thick beard. He looked at his hands. He had always had weekly manicures, and he moisturized twice a day, but his nails were torn and bitten, he had yellow calluses, his knuckles were barked and raw, and his skin was dry and coarse. He held up his arms. The backs of his hands were dark brown, but from the wrist up he was pale. He lifted the cover and looked down at himself. He had never liked to sleep naked. He looked white and shrunken and old. A new, thick layer of fat surrounded his waist, and he could feel it thickening around his back. His chest and back were covered with the beginning of a thick mat of grey hair. He had gotten waxed right before the trip  ̶  you never know when you’re going to meet someone, he had said to Grete over lunch salads  ̶   but the hair had come back like a shameful memory.

He got out of bed silently and dressed. The woman met him in the kitchen. This time, instead of handing him a mug of coffee as she had every morning since they’d arrived, she stood in front of the stove and looked at him. The early light came through the window, and he could see, plainly, the shape of her in the thin dress. He knew that shape by now. She stepped to him and looked up. She looked very old for a moment. Then the light changed and she looked young, but weathered or tired. Her hair may have been grey or silver or just very light blond, he was never certain. She took both of his hands and looked into his eyes, first one eye, then the other. She put one hand on the front of his pants, but he was unmoved. She unbuttoned her dress and dropped it. Her body was strong, very muscular and very womanly, like an ancient Venus, he thought. Not a body for chic clothes or boardrooms or photographs. A body for work and sex and children. She put her hand back on him, but of course he did not respond as she expected. She put his hand on her and held it there while she searched his face. Then she looked away, picked up her dress, rebuttoned it, and went back to the stove. She wiped her eyes with the inside of her wrist and stirred the pot of milk.

Hans got the axe, and he worked on the fallen tree for hours. Blisters formed, then bled, but he kept at it. Gradually, he learned to alternate the angle of his axe-strokes, so that each swing produced a fat chip of the green wood and the bit didn’t get stuck as it so frustratingly had at first. He chopped a length out of the trunk just wide enough to get the car through. He turned the car in the narrow road and inched through the gap he’d cut. He went back to the house for Grete. He found her shucking corn. Her hands were chapped and cracked, and her nails were short and showed yellow through the little polish that remained. Purplish bags sagged under her eyes, and the white roots that had grown into her dyed-black hair reminded him of a skunk. The skin of her cheeks and neck, without makeup, was blotchy, slack, and papery.

She looked at him. His hair had come in gray and gray hair was matted on his nape, throat, and face. Gray hair sprouted from his ears. His clothes were dirty and untidy. He was visibly fat around the middle. He carried himself slightly stooped, and capillaries had burst in his nose and under his bloodshot eyes.

They left the woman standing there tending the wood in the stove. She didn’t even look at them when they said thank you. They walked out to the car and drove back to the city in silence. She looked to the road ahead, and he watched the country scroll by outside his window. First the long tunnel of the forest, then the broadening valley, then the farms and villages, each more prosperous than the last. Then the freeway, then the suburbs, then the looming of the city, its welcome bustle and distractions, then the familiar front door of his building. She looked back to see that he had his bags, then merged into traffic, anonymous and alone.

The Sentence

Let’s say the author sets aside every Sunday, (he calls it the Sabbath, maybe a holdover from the time of certainty he uneasily enjoyed in his youth), to write, and it seems to work, this writing Sabbath, because his shit job, in retail or construction or in a restaurant, always leaves him too tired and dispirited to write at all from Monday through Friday, and then Friday nights he drinks with his buddies, and Saturday mornings are, therefore, pretty much recovery time, and, besides, he has to save his Saturdays for laundry and grocery shopping and unwinding and all that, so the Sunday writing schedule works pretty well for him, except that most Sundays he procrastinates til noon, and, when he finally picks up his pen and notebook and settles into his chair in his tiny apartment, he usually has the same old ideas over and over again, the same two stories he recycles endlessly, into which he plugs settings and characters and which he (sometimes entertainingly) disguises in a variety of styles, though he has but two themes in his life, two psychological or emotional impasses or what we can call stations, like radio stations that broadcast the same familiar bullshit day and night, between which he can choose but beyond which, on the AM dial of his mind, all else is late-night static, so, unless he has some kind of breakthrough, which he has stopped expecting, though for years it felt as though he was always on the cusp of one, he can tune into only these two stations: the station on which, through the velvet hiss of an old vinyl LP, he can always hear the song, a sort of old-timey round, an endless loop, in which the protagonist wanders deep into some unknown territory, (a wilderness; a forest; an abandoned building; an unnumbered and uninhabited floor in a busy building, inaccessible by the main stairs or elevator and somehow, mysteriously and portentously, unknown to the janitor and the landlord; that kind of thing), and makes of the place a beautiful, orderly, but lonely home in which he finds a provisional contentment that he will never be permitted to share with anyone, ever; and the other station, on which one character, usually a man, lives in mute capitulation after some undescribed tragedies that happened not too far in his past  ̶  the kind of tragedies we all endure, the most mundane kind, not the made-for-TV kind  ̶  have left him listless, dull, without passion, defeated, and his life, as the author tells it over and over, is just a repetitive act of mindless perseverance, and the character becomes so disaffected, or alienated, that the world around him (the closed world the author permits him to inhabit, and the only world the reader can see within the narrow aperture of the story) stops making sense and begins to take on a dreamlike unreality, as though underwater or in a nameless gray purgatory in which others are always just disappearing around a corner, just glimpsed at the edge of the frame, (or just out of earshot, or too self-involved, or speaking some language, of which he can’t understand a word, from the far eastern edge of a dingy socialist Europe), and strange things happen, and the author, and the protagonist, do not know why these things happen, and don’t even remember to wonder why, and strange artifacts appear, (which feel somehow like the obscure symbols of an alien allegory, heavy with the penumbra of significance, or immanence, but inscrutable, utterly out of reach), and the protagonist finds himself (or, rarely, herself) participating ineluctably in inexplicable happenings involving bizarre and vast machines (a cast-iron dirigible venting coalsmoke, a submarine commuter train with the flukes of a whale, a sewing machine the size of an apartment building, a footbridge floating out to sea, etc.) and reticent people (a woman wearing a veil sewn from the throatskins of pelicans, a campesino who expostulates preposterous philosophies, an ex-wife whose attorney waterboards the protagonist  ̶  or is it the author?  ̶  to force him to complete some recondite paperwork), and the author asks himself why he has these two particular preset stations to tune into, and if it’s just a phase he’s going through, and whether there is any escape, and, as he writes, as the sun lowers red this Sabbath evening, as his allotted time winds down before he returns to five more days of his shit job, he wonders if it really is enough to just do the work, to put one word after another, or, if an author has to “tap into” something vital and say something true (which is what he thinks he had better do, or why bother?), should he just quit now, or should he trust that he can someday do this right if he keeps plugging away at it?, and he is buoyed by a memory, he remembers that feeling of the deep congruence, let’s agree to call it, that can, what?, bloom?, between content and form, a congruence that feels very, very good, or right (is he remembering this accurately, after all this time?), that keeps him doing this strenuous (and maybe insane) thing every Sunday (but let’s be honest: it is not just the feeling of “deep congruence” that keeps him going; it is also the possibly-puerile fantasy that this will be read, and admired by admired people, and will sit on a long shelf of great books, and, one day, maybe, some other writer whose fire has almost gone out but who perseveres and does the work will take it down and open it and re-read it and use it as a kind of kindling, trusting anew that his  ̶  or her  ̶  oldest, driest, dullest, saddest, stupidest stories  ̶  the ones his shrink and his friends and family are sick of hearing  ̶  will smolder and catch and flare into something bright) with some kind of dogged hope, for what, exactly, he is not sure.