The End of 2024
You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either.
Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failure; for it is this evenness of temper which is meant by yoga.
Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahman. They who work selfishly for results are miserable.
— “Bhagavad Gita”
I came across this quote as I was reading Salinger’s Franny and Zooey for the first time, and, as you can maybe guess, it really struck me. I’ll get to why in a moment.
On the front of reading and writing, I have felt that this year has been a major (personal) success. My goal was to read twenty five books and I’m currently at twenty eight (hoping to hit thirty by the end of the year, while also trying not to be the sort of dickhead who distills reading into ‘the number of books they’ve read’). This is far more than I’ve ever read in a year, hands down… which I am proud of.
I got through a lot of ‘classics’ this year that don’t need more praise then they already get, like 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, The Brother’s Karamazov, etc. Truth is there were only a couple books I got through that felt like slogs, everything else was, at the very least, good. But the one that stuck with me more than any other was The Adversary by Michael Crummey. I read it back in the spring and I still think about it all the time. It’s a historical fiction set on the Newfoundland frontier and is so, so, so rich with tone, character and plot. It’s really a remarkable read, though also quite devastating (be warned). Would highly recommend.
To you guys, I’m curious what some of your standout cultural/artistic experiences have been this year. What’s been your highlight reading experience of 2024? Or film-going experience? Or visual art, or performance?
And when it comes to writing there’s more good news. I have written far, far more than I ever have before. Even more I think than back in my days as a writer for Tallboyz. By this I’m talking literal amount of words written. And I believe I will get even more done in 2025.
But I think the truly exciting discovery I made while writing this year was about a certain gear I never knew I had. You could call it thoughtless writing, which sounds bad, and it probably is, and that’s kind of the point.
Previously, I couldn’t help but write with the subconscious notion that the words I was putting down were the words that would be read (or, more accurately, judged). There was a pressure to ‘get it right’ on the first go (completely ignoring the adage of ‘writing is re-writing’). I think a lot of people feel this way, and never learn the power of just writing anyway. Getting the words, and ideas, on the page so that your future self can sculpt them into something exquisite. I want to write like this from now on. I want to write what comes.
“Renounce attachment to the fruits.” The fruits and the work represent the impassable divide between what we are, and what we are not, in control of. A great, timely example, to me, references a band I watched play this weekend in Toronto. The Boo Radley Project (instagram, spotify, the works) is a seven-man band a friend of mine is a part of, and holy shit do they rock. I’d be hard pressed to name a more entertaining live show I’ve been to. What I saw on that stage were some damn hard working musicians, who’d clearly honed their craft and built a vibrant, unique, impossible-to-pin-down sensibility. I saw the work, regardless of the fruits. It seems to me, that a band of that caliber should be seeing loads of money and success (money and success obviously not being the only ‘fruits’, but I think you get what I mean). The fruits and the work do not hold hands and remain at each other’s sides. They often live in opposing universes.
Sometimes we receive the fruits without having put in the work, and that can be its own kind of nightmare.
For me, (and I’m really not trying to be prescriptive here), my previous method of overly cautious writing was a bit of a fruits-first minded approach. Focused on the end product, and what it could give me. I still do it, it’s not like I’ve eradicated the habit, but I want to move into a direction where I write what comes. And focus, as hard as I can, on the work.
That is a part of my goal for the new year. I see new years goals as a bit of an audit, specifically in the resource of time. And now is the time to balance the budget. We’re going to put less time into the phone and more into music. Take less time out of thinking to myself ‘I really should run today’ and more time into just doing the run. I want to continue dedicating time towards writing, try to write more beautifully, more funny, more true; more characters, and places, and actions. I want to read more- thirty five books in 2025 is my goal. Wish me luck!
Thanks for being here and here’s to a better 2025!
Weekend: Part Three
Alex and Savannah are going to announce their engagement to Savannah’s family on Sunday. Before then, Alex has left for a weekend trip to see his ex-girlfriend, athough his fiance thinks he is visiting an old friend. While Alex is gone Savannah makes a trip to the local farmers market where she is approached by Ned, the friend that Alex claimed he was going up to see.
Neko typically slept well when she shared a bed with Alex. His warm blood radiated past his skin, making him a reliable source of heat, like a large hot water bottle which never seemed to cool. Though sometimes his heat felt suffocating, and inescapable, and made her body desperate for the opposite, a crisp wind to nullify the beads of sweat forming at her temple and armpits, under her breasts and behind her knees. The weather wasn’t particularly warm. Summer had officially forfeited to the autumn air, especially up north where they were.
It was their first night together in months, and it didn’t please Neko to have to ask Alex to stop spooning her and, matter-of-factly, get his arm off of her. But the heat was too much. Earlier she was perfectly comfortable, sitting next to Alex on the couch watching The Big Chill, reaching over to one another periodically with kneading hands and extended lips.
Near the end of the movie, Alex yawned as if he were sounding it out. It was the first moment Neko felt as if the thermostat had been uncomfortably increased by a degree or two. But the heat was likely a product of a sudden and heavy flow of traffic taking place within her own mind. A thought appeared, not in words but in a spastic fluttering of facial muscles, that she and Alex were not going to be having sex. The sound of the movie became background noise, and no longer was she able to focus on William Hurt’s tender sort of sexiness. Instead every motion and mannerism taking place between them became carefully considered, like a crime scene where the crime was about to happen. She felt paranoid, or high, and just about every further action of his reinforced her suspicion, making her want to shout at him, “I GET IT!”
As if yawning were not the universal indicator of tiredness, he stated numerous times, that he was indeed very tired. And it bothered Neko, and sent her to the place she had spent so much time near the end of their tenure as boyfriend and girlfriend; the land of guarded thought. An ecosystem of resentment, paranoia, doubt, suspicion, and anxiety which required of her that she come alone, and never share its secrets with the outside world.
It was in this place she asked herself a question, over and over: Why does Alex’s lack of interest in sex make me feel like I’m being used?
Neko lay in bed, awake but with her eyes closed, away from Alex, sensing his disappointment and disapproval about her pushing him away. She thought back to the last time he’d come over for a weekend. It was in July. They hadn’t had sex then either. Neko remembered being more okay with it then, for some reason she couldn’t remember. Possibly the summer heat. Possibly because she thought it would be a one-time thing. Neko imagined herself talking to her sister, the only one who knew that she and Alex were still seeing each other.
“Normally you hear about couples hooking up after ending things…” she felt herself say, so vividly her lips moved along with her. “I’ve never heard of, whatever it is we’re doing.”
As she imagined her sister responding, a delicate breath left her lungs, as if she were giving it life. “Would you prefer if the two of you were just fucking?” Neko’s sister was six years younger, a bartender living in the city, pursuing nothing but good times and enough money to maintain her compulsive tattoo habit. Their relationship had grown undeniably stronger after Neko left the city.
“I don’t know…” Neko responded.
“Maybe it’s the other girl. He might have told her about you. He might have promised not to fuck you.”
“He promised not to fuck me, but he can come over for a weekend of everything else? You think that makes sense?”
“Hey, don’t get snippy. You don’t know this girl. What’s her name again?”
“Savannah.”
It was around this point in the theoretical conversation when Neko’s sister lost her shape and melted away. Neko fell asleep, waking up three times throughout the night, each time with a deep uncertainty about the man sharing a bed with her.
She woke up for the final time around 8:30 in the morning. Early for a Saturday. The curtains were half drawn, letting a considerable amount of light into the room. She turned towards the bedroom door to see that it was partially open, and Alex was no longer next to her. She felt a sudden distance between herself and the spot he had slept in. The entire room felt distant, as if she’d shrunk. She wondered if her refusal to cuddle had made him leave. She felt both fear and relief, and the clash of these two incited the brief, sickening pain of a flu shot applied to her chest.
She got out of bed and put on a black housecoat which hung on a wood coatrack standing in the corner. In the kitchen, Alex took some wrapped food out of a paper bag. He turned to her, beaming.
“I was just about to get you,” he said.
The flowers he’d given her were in a vase on the kitchen table. There were two coffees and two plates with breakfast sandwiches Neko recognized were from a local bakery that sold incredible bagel breakfast sandwiches. She could tell from his smile, that he wanted her to smile just like him. But she couldn’t give him an expression that was any more than sympathetic and tired. And at this, his face flattened. But it didn’t feel like there was anything that could or should be done.
Neko sat down and began to unceremoniously eat her sandwich and drink her coffee. She could feel him watching her, and wanting her to celebrate with uncontested admiration.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he said with some eye rolling.
She looked away, pretending not to notice his visible disappointment. While pretending not to notice, she listened to the pace of Alex’s chewing, gauging just how upset he was based on how slow he was getting through each bite.
“What do you want to do today?” she asked.
He shrugged, while chewing and looking out the window. “I don’t care.”
Neko shook her head, disappointed at his answer.
“Well, I have that thing I’m supposed to do, but I could cancel it.”
“Whatever,” he said.
Neko put down her sandwich and wiped her hands together.
“What’s wrong?”
Alex tried looking surprised she would ask something like that. “Nothing.”
“God, Alex, please. Can we just cut to it?”
Alex took in a big inhale and let out an enormous sigh. She stared at him while he did so. “I guess I just thought you’d be a little happier about this,” he said, gesturing to the meal. “A little more grateful, honestly.”
“I just had a bad sleep. I’m sorry.”
“You’d think waking up to a nice breakfast’d help with that.”
“I said thanks!”
“Right. Sure.”
Neko shook her head. Then looked him back in the eyes. “How grateful do you want me to be exactly?”
Alex’s face was growing mix of disgust and evasive. “Whatever. Forget it.”
“Why should we forget it? It’s a reasonable question. You said I’m not grateful enough, how grateful should I be?”
“Let’s just drop it.”
“You are so fucking fragile Alex. I mean it. You can’t just do a nice thing for someone without expecting a fucking parade.” Neko paused, her voice calmed down. “And when that parade doesn’t come, you get really really bitter.”
Alex’s hand covered part of his face. “Is it wrong to want some recognition?”
“No,” Neko said. “But Alex I can’t just recognize you when you buy me breakfast. You’re— you’re a liar. And I’m the lie. And— and I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered what being in my position is like. Visiting me here every few months, as if my life will just freeze, as if all I do is wait for you to come back.”
“I don’t think that,” he said quietly.
“Alex this is insane. You have to realize that.”
“It is not insane. We love each other. We enjoy each other’s company.” He looked dumbfounded.
“You love me?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Yes. Of course,” he said, tilting his head to the side.
Neko didn’t care about figuring out whether he meant it or not. What she saw in him was a bottomless ability to say what needed to be said. She had always seen the cracks within Alex, but she was finally realizing just how far he was from the man she had once considered everything. It made her cry, hearing him say yes, when everything he did pointed to no. In her sobs, she felt that she believed him. He did love her, but it didn’t matter anymore. Neko found that very painful.
Alex sat there, and after a moment was able to understand that these were not tears of joy to hear that he loved her. This was something else. He couldn’t help but join her, her tears were contagious. And as he had feared the day before, their synchronized catharsis made him feel that it was time to share with her the piece of information he thought he could possibly keep from her his entire life.
“Savannah and I are engaged.”
It was difficult to tell whether Neko heard or not, because all she continued to do was cry, cry, cry.
The thought of Alex alone at her home was uncomfortable, but better than the idea of being back there with him. Neko decided to do ‘the thing she was supposed to do’. It was a date, a second date, with a friend of a friend at a coffee shop in town.
Very few people were inside. There was a man on his cellphone pacing outside. Inside were two baristas wearing black aprons and standing squarely as if they were expecting a visit from the queen. Neko suspected the place was new, though hadn’t lived in town long enough to be sure. It was clean, and had a stately atmosphere. Mysha sat there waiting, already with a coffee. She stood up as she saw Neko walk inside.
Apparent in Neko’s steps towards the bar was a shimmer of agitation. Neko smiled past Mysha as she politely would to a stranger crossing her path on a sidewalk. She then asked one of the baristas for a cup of hot water, leaving her back towards standing Mysha for a crude amount of time. The hot water was pushed towards her across the bar less than softly.
Neko sat down at the table and did not take her flannel jacket off. Instead she endured a few minutes of small talk before divesting Mysha of any opportunity to speak by means of an onslaught of troubles. Her situation with Alex, her regrets, her struggles, her hopes, her honest calculations of the sort of trouble she was in. The familiar sensations of relief and fear wrestled inside her gut as she wondered whether Alex would still be there when she got back. The fact that she was venting to a near stranger was known and ignored. As she spoke, she fiddled with her napkin, ripping it into small squares.
Mysha nodded persistently while wondering how her cats were doing and occasionally glancing at the man outside on his cellphone.
After ninety minutes of oversharing, Mysha was able to gently cut off the conversation, cut off Neko, cut off the circular quibbling. Both knew they’d likely never see each other again, and like an alien being called back to the mothership - Neko let go of her barely sipped water, stood up, and walked away.
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Free Shit will return in the new year with Chapter 20 on January 15th! Toodooloo!