Volume 6, Entry 7: Banach-Heartski

What I talk about when I talk about love

An unauthorized collaboration with the late Raymond Carver

My neighbor Mel McGinnis is talking. Mel McGinnis was a cardiologist before, when he was young, and sometimes that gives him the right.

The two of us are in his kitchen drinking. Gin for Mel, of course, and me one of those off-brand lemonades in an aluminum can. Sunlight fills the kitchen from the industrial window behind the sink, but it’s muted. You can tell it’s a cloudy day. It’s just Mel and me, even though Mel has two other glasses out. One was for me because he always forgets I don’t drink. The other was for Leanna because he always forgets that she died two years ago.

There’s an ice bucket on the table not far from his hanging cane. The gin and the tonic water sit next to it in front of Mel like his own personal chemistry set. Like always, we somehow get onto a subject out of nowhere like we’re in a short story. It pops out from the ether. Last time, Mel had a lot to say about money, I think because I mentioned the Dodgers and he didn’t think anybody should have anything that easy. This time we get onto the subject of love.

It isn’t the first time. Mel always has a lot to say on the subject of love. He went to the seminary first which colors everything for him, I think. Sometimes when he brings up his spiritual love theories I almost laugh and have to sip my drink to hide it. The thought of Mel McGinnis as a priest cracks me up. The guy was married three times: to Marjorie, the devil as he tells it, and then to Terri for a long time before Leanna. I couldn’t tell you anything about Marjorie beyond that she was allergic to bees and about Terri I know even less except that the corners of Mel’s mouth droop when her name comes up.

Leanna I met. A few times. I would have never expected her to go first. No offense to Mel. She seemed timeless even at eighty in a way Mel didn’t.

“The thing about love is that it sticks around,” Mel says. He licks his lips. “Even when there’s no vessel for it. It’s there.” He looks at one of the empty chairs.

“I buy that,” I say. I’m leaning against his counter top, trying to keep my back loose. “I can drink to love sticking around.” I raise my can in his direction, but Mel doesn’t notice, so I just take a sip.

“The kind of love I know sticks around. It’s like cigarette smoke. It gets in the walls. You can’t scrub it out.” Mel stares at his gin. A shadow keeps his expression hidden.

“It does,” I say. “Cigarette smoke, I mean. My friend bought a house once where the previous owner was a smoker. That owner couldn’t get his own stale odor out so he put vanilla-scented plug-ins in every room. Actually, it might have been every outlet. That guy was nuts. When my friend bought the house, it smelled like sweaty vanilla ice cream. My friend had to scrub the walls to get the vanilla out.” I laugh.

Mel smacks his lips and says, “That is love. For sure.”

“Which one?” I ask.

“Which one?” Mel asks right back like it’s self-evident. “What the hell do you mean ‘Which one’?”

“I mean which one. The smoke or the vanilla.”

“What?”

I take a swig of lemonade. “I meant, was it the smoke or the vanilla that you’d call love?”

Mel doesn’t hesitate. “Both. The smoke and the vanilla. The kind of love I’m talking about is both.”

I say, “You’re too profound for me, Mel. You’ve gotta explain this one.” I add, “You were the heart surgeon.”

Mel always sits taller when I bring that up, and he does this time, too. “You’re not married, so you wouldn’t know.” He eyes Leanna’s empty glass. “You’ve never?”

I shake my head. “Nope.”

He continues like he never stopped. “You’ve never been, but I’ve been three times. At first love is those smoky walls. It’s stale nicotine and tar and whatever bastard shit they put into those things and it’s just rank in every room. You think you’ll never get the smell out of your nose. That maybe it isn’t in the walls but in your nostrils. Then when you find someone else, you want their scent everywhere instead so you can erase the smoke residue. You go gaga for each other because you’re just so relieved to not be smelling smoke everywhere.”

I say, “And sometimes you overdo it.”

Mel says, as though he’s repeating the words, “Sometimes you overdo it. With the vanilla.”

I nod. “Was that how it was with Terri? Or after Marjorie at least?”

He squints at his glass. “No.“

“No? Just no?”

He says nothing.

I say, “Or maybe it was for Terri at least. After that whole thing with Ed.”

Mel scowls. He says, “That wasn’t love, and you know it.”

“I—”

Mel ignores me. “Ed used to beat her, you know. He’d drag her around and threaten her and always insist it was love and it wasn’t. Blowing your brains out, that’s not love. That’s just not love.”

I can see bringing up Ed was a mistake. Some wounds never close.

I say, “I’d never thought about love that way. I don’t think I see it that way.” I sip my drink. The lemonade’s lukewarm even though the can still feels cold to my fingers.

Mel says, “But you don’t know love.” He spits it out in a way that would offend me if he was younger.

“I know Ed needed a few vanilla plug-ins.”

*****

I say, “You know what, Mel? I’m taking the bait. I do know some things.”

Mel says, “About what now?”

I say, “About love. I know some things about love.”

“Like hell you do.”

I fiddle with the little tab on the can. “Have you ever heard of Banach-Tarski?”

He wrinkles his nose and looks at the gin. “Banana what now?”

“Banach-Tarski. It’s a math thing.”

He doesn’t know but he has too much pride to say so. “Well I’ve heard of it. Sure. But…” He reaches for his gin and takes a sip.

“Banach-Tarski is a paradox in some geometry. It says that you can break down a ball into pieces and then reassemble it—”

Mel says, “Well, Christ. Of course you can!”

I say, “No, Mel, it’s not one ball. It’s two. You can break one ball down and reassemble it into two balls. And not miniatures or anything. You get two identical copies. Two of the original ball.”

“That’s impossible,” Mel says. “That’s cloning.”

I shrug and say, “It’s a paradox, yeah. But I think it’s proven. That is, I think Banarch-Tarski is actually a theorem, but they call it a paradox because it’s pretty trippy.”

Mel says, “It’s stupid. That’s what it is.”

I say, “Maybe it is.”

Mel says, “And it’s not love. That’s for damn sure.”

I say, “Well, now, give me a chance. Hey. Lemme try to explain. I didn’t even get there yet.”

Mel shakes his head at me, but he’s listening.

“See, I’ve always had trouble with love stories like yours, Mel,” I say. “Even though you hated Marjorie later, you must have loved the woman at first. Maybe even loved her more than life itself once, maybe after the kids were born or maybe right before. But then you hated her and wished she’d get stung to death by bees. And you loved Terri so much then. Instead. As much as you loved Marjorie before, right? How can you have loved both of them with all your heart, how can you have given both women your whole heart? That breaks physics, Mel. It can’t make sense unless your heart regenerated. Or reassembled. You get my point. You did give your entire huge heart to Marjorie and you loved her to the moon and back, and when she broke that heart, it fractured the thing into disjoint subsets. But then it reassembled into two identical hearts. So you could give the whole thing again to Terri. Because you had a new one.”

Mel isn’t drunk yet, but he looks at me like I am.

“Banach-Tarski,” I say. I swallow down some lemonade. “Two hearts. Banach-Tarski.”

Mel says, “You’re nuts. You’re crazier than ol’ Ed.” He’s smiling, though, so I know he doesn’t mean it seriously. I smile back.

“It makes sense to me.”

“It doesn’t, Mike. It doesn’t at all.” He licks his lips and glances at the bottle of gin he hasn’t bothered to cap. “Where’s the other copy then?”

“Copy?”

He says, “The original heart. The one you copied. Where does it go if the new one takes its place?”

I hesitate. It’s a good point and we both know it. “Well, it must stay with the original person. Or.”

“Or what?”

“Or…” I try to find my way out but can’t. “Yeah, you’re right, Mel. Maybe Banach-Tarski doesn’t make sense for love.” I go for a swig of lemonade but the can’s empty. I reach for another from the six pack sitting on the counter.

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Mel says. But there’s consolation in his voice. I like the guy.

Mel is eighty-five years old. He was probably tall and rangy once, a real striking guy, but he’s hunched and skeletal now, and his curly soft hair is patchy. His face and arms have lost the color they probably had when he and Leanna played pickleball down the street.

I break the silence. “You know, Mel? You know what. I don’t actually think that’s how love works.”

Mel laughs. “It’s not. Take it from me. I’ve been around a few times. It’s not like that. It’s like the lemon air fresheners.”

He means vanilla, but I don’t correct him.

“I think you’re right. Can I try again?”

Mel says, “It’s a free country. In here it is. You can try. And I’ll tell you if that’s love.”

“I appreciate that, Mel.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Mel says with a nod. “Since you don’t know these things. And because I like you. I wanna help.”

“The doctor is in.”

He smiles. “Doctor Melvin R. McGinnis, at your service. Now tell me what you’re thinking.”

I say, “Here goes, then. I don’t think Banach-Tarski makes sense, but I do think it’s close. To that, I mean. I think we’ve only got the one heart so it means something when we give the whole thing to somebody. But sometimes when we hand it over like that, the other person breaks it. Or maybe they die or they meet someone else or maybe they just don’t want it and so the thing breaks. It shatters into a million bloody pieces of hot throbbing flesh. A billion even. The clean-up should be impossible. There’s too much blood, too much pulpy gore, it gets under our fingernails and we end up washing it down the sink. But then we rebuild that heart for the next person. It’s with the same pieces because the conservation of matter and energy is a thing, but the reassembly can’t possibly be identical. That’s another reason it’s not Banach-Tarski. It’s a new ship out of the old pieces.”

Mel says, “Like the Ship of Thesis.”

I say, “It’s Theseus. The Ship of Theseus.”

“Thesis, Theseus,” Mel says, “what the fuck’s the difference? You know what I mean anyway. All right.” Mel says, “So I’m not educated.”

“Hey, now. Whoa, Mel. I’m just saying.”

“I was a heart surgeon.”

I say, “And a damn good one. I’m sure. The most important mechanic there is. But, Mel, and hey, hear me out, I don’t care what you call it. Call it the ship of Jeebus if you want to—that isn’t quite what I’m talking about.”

Mel puts both hands on his glass. There’s color in his cheeks, but his eyes are on me.

“I mean, Mel, hey—I like that thought. The Ship of Theseus. Whoa. Thats a pretty damn insightful connection. I wish I’d thought of it, you know? But it doesn’t work because the Ship of Theseus gets all of its parts replaced. It gets new parts. That’s not the love I’m talking about. I’m saying that you rebuild the ship with all the same pieces. Or most of em—I guess you lose a few down the sink from the fingernails and whatnot. The heart you gave all of to Terri, that heart? That heart was a rearrangement of the broken pieces from the one you gave to Marjorie. It felt new, or at least different from what was there with your first wife because it’d been reassembled. The pieces all fit together a little differently. The rhythms changed. And a few pieces are missing. That’s must be how love works. It’s gotta be conservative like every other force.”

Mel says, “I do like that better. I can get behind that.”

I say, “Yeah? That works for the heart doctor?”

Mel says, “None of that Banach-Tarski bullshit. It’s. It’s. It’s Banach-Heartski.”

I make a big show of smiling. “Mr. Not-Educated over here. You’re still pretty sharp, Mel. You are clever.”

He takes a victory sip of the gin. “I have my moments. Banach-Heartski. It’s the same heart pieces but it looks and plays all new.”

I say, “That’s it. In a nutshell. And, hey, it explains those old twinges. It explains the nail houses that you stumble into sometimes.”

“The whats? Houses on the fringe?”

“Oh. No, no no. The twinge. The twinges. Like, these little pains from past loves. The ones that always stick around even though you’ve moved on.”

Mel grits his teeth. “You’ve lost me again.”

“Oh c’mon. You’ve been married three times. You know. The nail houses. Those plots where the original owner never sells and they just build the commercial properties right around them. You’ve driven by one in that park. On the way to Raley’s. It’s a park with a decaying old house dropped in the middle. Technically that’s a historical thing, not a nail house, but that’s the gist. It’s the same idea.

Mel says, “I know the park. Fine. Yeah. The ones that don’t sell.”

“Exactly.”

Mel says, “Exactly nothing. What’s that got to do with love?”

I set my can on the table and slide into the chair opposite Mel’s. “Everything, Mel. Everything. Think about it: the heart you have is a bunch of pieces from your old heart all glued back together, so even though it’s a new heart, it’s also most of your old heart, so all that old love sticks around in some form. It’s in there, too. It’s underneath the coat of new love that takes command of the thing. That’s why I feel a sort of longing sometimes for these women I loved once. It’s like there’s parts of that rebuilt heart of mine where the new paint just won’t stick. Those are the nail houses, the properties that never converted when I rezoned a few years ago. Most of those plots disappear, but a few stick around. The landscape around them’s been razed, but there they sit. Kayte still has one. Blows my mind that—”

Mel interrupts. “Who’s Kayte?”

I laugh, “I was just gonna tell you. She was a high school crush and—”

Mel rolls his eyes. “A high school crush? Geez. Mike. Come on now. Mike. That doesn’t count. Not as real love.”

“Come on yourself, Mel. Geez. You really do talk about love like it’s some absolute.”

“Nick always,” Mel starts to say something but he pauses. He swallows. “I’ve been told that I do.”

“You do. That’s the truth. But it’s so narrow, Mel. Your absolute is narrow. To say this is love and that’s love but this isn’t love. Geez, man. Love is a fucking paradox, Mel. I know that what I felt for Kayte isn’t the day-to-day caring kind or even the love of her being type. I get it. I was a kid. A pretty girl was nice to me, she included me, appreciated me when I helped her. That stuff is tiny now, but it grabbed my whole heart then. It’s all silly now, and cringey. It’s so cringey to think of how I thought about it, but it was so raw and illogical and all-encompassing sometimes. She was so kind to me, even after I embarrassed myself, and that made it quieter. More pragmatic, too. It definitely got more pragmatic. But I’d swear I loved her more then, between la sombra y el alma than I did out loud. Even when I gave my heart to other girls who batted it away, too, there were pieces that were Kayte’s still. Like some part of it would always be hers. Like the love I felt then, that raw, uncut, straight from the earth love was too great to ever give away to others.”

“No way,” Mel says. “I’m gonna put my foot down there. That’s not love at fifteen, Mike. It’s hormones. It’s all these chemicals flooding your body and—”

I say, “Geez, Mel. I’m 38, not thirteen. Dr. Melvin R. McGinnis doesn’t have to explain puberty.”

“Well, maybe he does. If you’re gonna be talking about a high school crush against real love, well then, hey. Maybe I do. Maybe you need the talk again.”

“Well I don’t. In fact, I think you’re being uncharitable. Yeah, take that, Doc. I think there’s a power to those first loves when there’s no awareness of their boundaries. There’s an unbridledness in the beginning, almost a delusion. Kids think ‘I’m gonna marry her’ or ‘I’m gonna grow old with him’ because they can’t conceive of a feeling that big being temporary. Kids don’t even know themselves yet they know the thrill of being wanted all the same. That’s tragic in a way, but I swear it’s beautiful too. You and me, we know living too well to believe that stuff. You and me, Mel, we can feel the cracks on our hearts, we know there’s duck tape holding all the pieces together. We accept that one moment Marjorie is the blue true dream of sky but someday she might be maple syrup spilled on the floor. A sticky mess that’s hard to clean up. I envy those who love without our blinders, Mel. I know most of the couples won’t make it, but it only takes a few to remember to see the beauty in those first flecks of love. It’ll be more finite next time. We should all be in awe of love at those first moments. But I also think some part of it sticks. It might look different eventually—Banach-Heartski and whatnot—and it’s a naive thing, but those first loves have a staying power. Even when they’re just a crush.”

The cloudy sunshine inside the room is different now, changing, getting thinner. The shadows are longer. They hang on every cupboard like children listening in. We each sip our drinks. We’re recovering between rounds.

*****

It’s Mel who breaks the silence.

“Don’t take this the wrong way or nothing because that’s something. It is. I don’t know what you’d call it, either. But I sure know you wouldn’t call that love.”

I say, “And I would. I do. That’s that. I know what I know.”

Mel says, “How is that? Aren’t you Mr. Aromantic? Or whatever?

I teeter the can on its bottom lip for a second. I sigh.

“My heart is Schroedinger’s cat, Mel. But whether the kitty’s dead or alive, I think I know what I’m talking about. The heart’s a more flexible muscle than you say.”

Mel says, “I was a heart surgeon. Hey. Lest you forget. I know a thing or two about that muscle, Mr. Banach-Tarski.”

I say, “You should, but yet you’re all about this being love and this being not. I’d have thought you were more romantic than that considering your experience.”

Mel says, “I am. I’m romantic about real love. If it’s a story where there’s something real there, two people who can’t live without the other, I’m a sucker for them. Like, hey, have I told you about the couple I worked on in Albuquerque?”

I nod. “Yeah, you have. You bring it up every time I’m here.”

He frowns. “No, I don’t. You haven’t heard this one. You see, there’s this old couple—”

I stop him. “—that gets hit by some drunk kid. He dies, they live, but just barely. You and your team get them through the night, but they’re in rough shape. Full body casts, traction, the works. And because they can’t move in those casts, the husband gets depressed because even though he knows she’s alive and even though he knows she’s in the same room, he can’t see her.”

Mel looks at me. His brow’s thinned to a wisp of what it probably was once, but I can see it’s raised. “Yeah.“

I say, “The man’s heart was breaking because…”

Mel finishes the line. “…because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.” He looks down at his glass and then pours in the rest of the gin. He frowns and takes a long gulp.

He says, “It was killing the old fart.” The words come out deflated.

I can tell I’ve gone too far. “I’m sorry, Mel. I am. I love that story. You tell it well, too.”

He says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know I’m repeating myself. My stories.”

“Oh no.” I pat the table softly. “No. Don’t apologize. I like talking to you Mel. Visiting is like picking up a favorite book. But you know, that story doesn’t get me like it does you. Not anymore, I mean. At the beginning it did, but not anymore.”

“Fuck off,” Mel says. It comes out with unintended edge. The delayed effects of all that gin, I’m sure. He doesn’t apologize, but he looks up and stares at my lemonade can. “What do you mean?”

I tap the lid with my index finger. “I mean that story doesn’t crush me anymore. Now before you get mad, I understand the aspirational element of the thing. We should all be so lucky to love another person like that.”

“Damned straight,” Mel says.

“Yeah, of course. It’s a Hallmark movie of a story, Mel. And I love that your heroics made it possible. But I’m just saying, today it hits me different. My heart’s a new shape now. Banach-Heartski, I guess. But yeah, my first thoughts now are cynical. Or almost cynical, maybe. I think of that moment in the hospital and I want to roll my eyes. I don’t think the old man means it.”

Mel’s shoulders tense up. Color rises in his cheeks, glowing red through the blanketing shadows. “Like hell he didn’t.”

I put up my hands. “Let me explain, Mel. Hold it. I think he loved his wife. I have no doubt the man loved her dearly. But for one, I think that proclamation was performative. I think he was telling you to put it on the record. So that if he didn’t make it, you’d say it to her since he couldn’t speak it loudly enough to tell her himself. I also think the morphine may have played a role. A full body cast? Within inches of death? All night orthopedics and blood transfusions? Hey now, I’m a teacher, not a cardiologist, but I can bet you blitzed the shit out of that poor man with morphine. 100% you did. Of course he’d speak all fuzzy like that. You know, it’s funny, but he sounds like me. In high school, I mean. That’s the kind of shit I’d think about Kayte. And mean it, Mel. Old and young, hey, maybe they’re the same thing.”

Mel looks like he wants to say something, but I’m not done, so I start up again.

“But that’s not it. I mean, Mel, even that so-called cynicism is still romantic. Right? If it’s all a performance, that’s Mariana Trench-deep love. Man: thinking he might die, he’s whispering breadcrumbs to make sure his wife knew how much he loved her? Holy shit, that chokes me up.” I reach up and wipe away the tears. “I mean, fuck, Mel? That’s incredible. Same thing with the morphine, though. The man’s in cloud cuckoo land and he’s not thinking of, like, Cybill Shepard or Marilyn Monroe but his wife. His seventy-five-year-old wife. That right there is love. It’s love for the ages. Shit, I’m fully on board with that. Imagine what it must have been like for her when she finally met his gaze some weeks later and felt that kind of unbreakable, immortal love.”

Mel says, “What are you talking about, then? Seems like we’re in the same page.”

I say, “But we’re not, Mel. We’re not. Because your story makes me sad because I can’t even fathom that kind of love. I can’t. The idea of concentrating that much love on one person, of giving your heart over to a single person, Mel, it doesn’t make sense. My heart doesn’t work that way. It sounds selfish to my ears, and silly, the same as my love for Kayte was. I don’t have much heart left, Mel. Forget Banach-Heartski. I don’t think you can ever collect back the parts you give away. Not when it’s real love, when you really mean it. I’ve handed my heart out like Halloween candy, I dump warm fleshy chunks in so many plastic pumpkin buckets every year that it’s a wonder I can still pump the blood through the thing. I mean it. When I loved Kayte, and one-sided though it was you’re not gonna convince me that wasn’t love, well, when I loved her, it was with a heart at nearly full capacity. I had so much of it to give then, and I wanted that girl to have all of it. But it’s been twenty-one years and I’ve doled the thing out to so many people since then, and you’re gonna argue that’s not love, that none of those players or students or colleagues or characters were actual love, and I’m gonna say right back that you’re wrong Mel because I gave them a chunk of myself, thinking that the cardiac fiber was infinite, that it regrew and regenerated and backfilled and only lost little tiny slivers that no one would ever miss, but the thing is, I’ve given it all away. I give it all away. Every day I give away a little more to people like you, Mel, who think it’s all a ruse or an act or a performance but it’s not a fucking performance, it’s real, and it’s this wild thing to think about because the thought of anything else, of having some woman like your oldster, of having my little GIF or my boy with his bat, it feels selfish to think about hoarding it for one person or keeping it in one family. Why does love have to go one place, Mel? Why? You loved Marjorie and that broke down, I know. But you loved Terri and then you loved Leanna later, too, but you loved your kids and you loved Nick, and don’t try to tell me that’s different, because I think you know you loved your old pals, you felt safe enough with him to tell him you wished you were a knight. Don’t you get that I’m only here for you because I recognized that you and me, were the same? We’re the sensitive types, the ones who fall in love with people automatically. They flitter in and out of our lives, they’re temporary parts but they get permanent residency all the same. How many times did you go back to see that old couple, Mel? Huh? How many times? Ten? Twenty? Every day? Twice a day for months? Don’t tell me that isn’t love, Mel. It’s different than the word they all use, but you and me, we can use it right. We can say it without trimming off the edges, Mel. Don’t put on armor. Don’t wear a beekeeper mask. You’ll overheat in there, remember? Just let the definitions go. Let it all in. Feel it all. Even when the trick-or-treating’s over and they all walk off with a slice of your left ventricle, it’s something to call it by its name. Let it out, Mel. It’s Valentine’s Day. Just call it all love and then we can both feel okay with how we’ve used ours.”

I’m breathing hard. I look over at Mel and find him with the empty glass of gin. He’s holding it in both hands under his chin so that the tears rolling down his cheeks land inside. For how long I’ve been there and he’s been drinking, those tears might as well be gin.

Mel speaks but I can’t hear him.

“What’s that?”

“I can’t.”

My shoulders droop. “Geez, c’mon, bud. Why can—”

Mel says. “I can’t because then you’ll leave. I miss them. I miss them so much some nights. I miss how I didn’t need the armor. With them. I miss talking and I miss being listened to.”

I say, “You loved them.”

Mel says, “Call it what you want. I miss them. I don’t like being alone.”

I pick up my lemonade and take a swig, but the can is empty. I look around the kitchen to the counter but the darkness hides the other four cans.

“I know,” I say. “I know you don’t.”

The light’s drained fully out of the room, going back through the window where it came from. I can hear Mel rubbing his thumb against his glass. It’s so quiet that when my stomach rumbles, it’s like the whole room is fracturing in two. It’s too loud to ignore.

“We’ve been talking hearts,” I say, “but my stomach runs the show sometimes. I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life.”

There’s just enough light that I can see Mel’s eyes go wide.

“Hey now. The gin’s not gone.”

“I know. But there’s nothing to nibble on,” I say it with a resigned shrug it’s too dark for eighty-five-year-old eyes to see.

“But the cheese? The cheese and—”

“There isn’t any, Mel. I’m not sure there ever was. I’ve gotta go.” I stand up from the chair.

Mel creaks in his chair. “Please stay. I don’t want you to go. Not you too. They all go. They all went. Now it’s just me.”

I glance at the lemonade on the counter, and somehow Mel sees me.

He says, “At least let me finish the gin.”

I grab the four cans and move them into the refrigerator. When I open the door, there’s just enough light to see Mel’s face watching me.

I sigh and slide into the chair. I point to the gin.

“I’ll stay for your last sip, Mel. Then I have to go.”

Mel’s turn to sigh. “Thanks, Mike.”

“Just drink up, bud. And hey, how ‘bout I come back and visit next year? Same time maybe? I feel like I’ve probably got to more say.”

Mel says, “About love?”

I say, “The one and only.”

I can hear my heart beating. I can hear Mel’s heart. I can hear the human noise we two are making, not one of us moving, not even as the room goes completely dark.

---

So I recorded a 62-minute debrief about this piece using OBS tonight…but accidentally hit “Start Streaming” instead of “Start Recording” so that 62-minute debrief that was very thorough is gone forever. OBS doesn’t back anything up in case the stream connection fails so I’m pretty frustrated—I could have been typing my tests up. Apologies to the five people who really enjoy those.

I’ve deliberately based this piece on the Raymond Carver short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, the same short story I wrote my final English term paper about during college and the same short story Riggan Thompson attempts to adapt in Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance which won Best Picture for 2015. I used my copy of the Carver anthology (by the same name) containing it, but you can read the short story online by going here. As a heads up, I don’t believe that should be posted there; Carver’s works merit reading in full.

I hope you all had wonderful Valentine’s Days. This has been a difficult week, but I’m glad that it ends with me sharing this with you (if not my recording).