Go

Sunday 6/23/24

I've spent the morning working on "Go and Come Back." It's outstanding. Truly, truly outstanding. Required reading for life. It's actually going into There Is No Doubt: Story Girls. So in addition to me going through all of the stories that had been in the book and making what changes need to be made, it's being added to as well. But I mean, come on. From near the beginning:

The friends got older and they separated some. They had different groups. He had travel league baseball and she didn’t. She did gymnastics with these girls and they weren’t him and he wasn’t at their houses when she went there. But then groups blend. Old friends are simply older after time apart. They had gone and they had come back. It was almost as if they were meeting again but they already knew how much they liked each other and now they free to be more. In fact, they should be more. Why not? It felt so right to the girl. That she was growing up and this was how you did it and what everything was all about.

From near the end:

He thought again about how much he loved the three of them. They who were there. How they were in relation to each other. He could say something general about boys so that he wouldn’t be betraying a specific confidence that had already been betrayed. Sort of. That they were the worst. Some of the better ones will try to get a lot more correct than the rest, but they will still falter. They’ll rise and then they’ll stumble. Two steps up, three down with a clattering. They’ll need help standing again. And who will provide that help? Someone in pain. Who has known it.

But this all sounded like boys had to be rescued and it was up to the girls they had disappointed and hurt to do the rescuing, which wasn’t what he wanted to impart at all. He could feel himself sliding back down the ladder.

How are you going to come close to that level if you're any of the talentless people of this system? But yeah, have a Guggenheim, have Genius Grant, have a Pulitzer, you talentless frauds.

It'll all come down.

Anyway. In the meanwhile, this is an unreal story. If I was the kind of person who was proud of these things that I do more naturally than others draw breath, I'd be proud of this one.