The Passing of People and Things

“I feel constant pressure of the years thinning out ahead of me. I know the tales I want to tell. It's just time, running out.”

Dear Friend,

Apologies for the lateness of this letter. I was hoping and still hope for the future, to discuss some light and fluffy topics, but, once again, 2025 has thrown down, right out of the gate, and I find myself wanting to make record before the rushing river of time washes memory too far downstream.

Howard Andrew Jones

In 2021, I received a Facebook message from Howard Jones, a friend I hadn’t spoken to since I was in 7th grade and he was in 9th. He’d listened to a podcast where I’d been interviewed as a writer, and he was reaching out because he was a writer, too. It turned out that by several units of measure—like publication, fan base, having planted a flag in a genre and written two series of novels — he was more a writer than I.

For the next few years, we stayed in touch. He generously sought out my work in literary journals and sent me notes responding to them, and I tried to do the same, but our first rush of conversation was the most extensive, in the way of randomly finding an old acquaintance and realizing how many things you have in common. Love for writing, frustration-turned-acceptance at the time it takes to “break in,” and the constant need to feed the machine with content and marketing after that, the minimal financial rewards—but also, the pleasures in doing the work and the delight of finding one’s readers.

We also, then and other times talked about the competition for time between all the things we wanted to do in life and the things we wanted to do on the page.

In August of 2021, he wrote, “I feel constant pressure of the years thinning out ahead of me. I know the tales I want to tell. It's just time, running out.”

Three years later, in September of 2024, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died a week ago today, leaving me with the knowledge that I have more time that he had – but also with thinning years ahead. His memory is a blessing.

Howard looking much as I remembered him, and two of his books.

Robert Keeter

In 2018, I was planning a trip to Northern California and I invited my mom to come with me. She had recently heard from a cousin she hadn’t seen since childhood, and he was living in San Francisco. And that’s how I met “Cousin Bob.”

He was a bit eccentric, and self-contained. He’d grown up gay in the 50s with little compassion from his family. He’d served in the military and worked as a legal word processor and was proud of his well-located rent-controlled studio apartment that he’d lived in for decades and kept neat as a pin, and his doll collection.

We kept in sporadic contact, and I visited one other time, but we were mostly Christmas-card cousins, and it was only when my mom’s holiday card came back to her with a note from a neighbor that we learned he had died back in March. We had thought, from conversations, that he was close with the neighbors in his building, but the man who wrote the note described him as being “close to the vest.” It hurts my heart that his obituary contained only the dates of his birth and death.

Bob studied journalism in school, and was proud of this publication.

David Lynch

Not a personal friend of mine! A famous filmmaker, he has been eulogized widely in the last week, so I will add only this: He was WASPy, from middle America, and not afraid to dig into those things to excavate deeply weird. Something about his work felt familiar in my soul in my 20s, I watched Scorsese and knew I could never be that, but something about Lynch’s work made me think, maybe there are areas of this water where I could swim. His work likely put me on the trajectory I’ve been falling on and off for the last three decades.

cool image, borrowed from user YABOI888XXX on reddit.

America, as we have known it

I hope I am being overly dramatic in saying this. I might not be.

Now is probably a good time to recommend another newsletter on Substack. So many events seem poised to rush past us every day in the near future, it is too hard for most of us to keep track or make record. Heather Cox Richardson has taken it upon herself to do so, and I am always grateful for her daily posts to my inbox.

Be safe and well and call the people you’ve been thinking about calling.

Barrington