You Can Never Go Back

to Substack, to your wife's hometown, to your kids, to your self

It’s been a bit. I can’t keep up.

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After two years, I returned to my favorite DC coffee shop and found their current cup sizes too big - a cappuccino shouldn’t be the same size as a latte!

We drove to the Asian market and the many hidden stores inside had changed - where once were mochi donuts, now served only noodles!

Grandma used to never leave us alone. Now, Grandma leaves her living room lamps unlit and goes to bed before the sun sets. The driveways on her street are lined with landscaping, when before: simply edged against grass.

I ask my kids if they want to see the new Superman. They ask me to press play on Minecraft again. I turn up the volume when Counting Crows tracks next on my wife’s favs playlist. From the backseat, Einstein on the Beach (For an Egg Man) gets shouted down in favor of Golden from K-Pop Demon Hunters.

The whole trip I expected to work on my novella in progress of which pages I started years ago but instead I slept in and only occasionally read some short stories.

July:

I read JD Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish this afternoon. Famous short story satisfaction meter = not much. Perhaps, because I knew the ending already, having Wikipedia’ed a year or more ago for Frannie and Zoey context? But I can’t help but wonder if I didn’t know the ending of Bananafish that it would have annoyed me reading it fresh. Ignoring whether the shock ending is justified, I wonder if it’s a case of the story being out of time? (For example, he calls a little girl, “pussy,” but it’s not crude, it clearly means, “sweetie pie” or “darling.” But the use of the term suggested to me that maybe when he lured her into the water to search for “bananafish,” it was a pedo-story? Bananafish being one of those presidential code-words like “enigma?” I got very mixed feelings about Salinger - I think his prose is magical in how he can keep you reading even when nothing is happening — but I’m annoyed that nothing happens!!

August:

I’m reading the new Weird Tales, the Undead Issue, because I’m a sucker for a new Stephen Graham Jones story, but halfway through and I’m wishing for more vampires or Frankensteins or ghouls or anything except for ZOMBIES…

I’m also reading the new issue of the Believer, because it had an article written by an exvangical returning to a Campus Crusade for Christ’ Winter Conference, which once upon a time, I attended too, and is where I committed a year to ministry after college because during a sermon everyone around me stood while I was daydreaming so I stood, too, thinking the message was done and it was time for song, but no, it was a question and a challenge, and only afterward did I understand what I was promising God by standing, haha.

Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed that article/memoir, though it was heartbreaking and I hope the author hasn’t completely given up on romance.

I’m also reading McSweeney’s 76, which is short stories (mostly), and which I’m also enjoying (mostly).

What are you reading? Would you recommend it? Why?

Anyhow, I better start writing soon, lest I end up consistently bitter at those who do and judge every story I read against my imagined own.

That’s the fear - that if you don’t find make time to create, you’ll no longer be able to enjoy art or anything else.