The hard part of the work we do as humans involves building walls—not soundproof ones, but porous ones at best. This year of starting anew has been about those porous walls. This year, as I’ve said many times, I live in an apartment building in Manchester. It’s a perfectly reasonable place, but like me, the walls are thin. I can hear everything on either side of me.
Last month, before my pilgrimage to the Midwest to move my once-brilliant mother—now in the full grip of dementia—out of her home for the last time, and before I began doing the work to build a school for children on the autism spectrum, there was the cat girl. She is about eighteen years old, or thereabout, who lived next door and spoke almost every word in a high-pitched baby voice to her cat.
I mean, “snook-em-workums this” and “Hi, Bella” and other terms of endearment to her cat. For hours on end.
When she wasn’t speaking in that baby-talk sing-song voice that pierced the plaster walls, she swore like a sailor—to her friends, the DMV, her college dean’s office, or some other nameless human on the other end of her phone. After listening to cat talk for weeks, when I first heard her “adult” voice back in August, I froze. Had someone broken into her apartment and replaced her with one of those meth-skeletons — humans to be sure, but in the throes of full-blown addiction — I see under the viaduct at all hours from time to time? At that point, I stopped writing and listened for a while. Oh, did I mention I could hear everything? She wasn’t yelling; it was more conversational as if we were in one of those open-office concept workspaces, and everyone waited for their moment of airtime on The Office.
If that wasn’t enough, on the other side of my apartment, there was nose-blowing guy. He “dry-blew” his nose at all hours of the day and night. How do I know it was dry-blowing? Because, like an unproductive cough, it seemed to yield nothing. No mucous, no relief—just this stuck, futile sound. I first heard it when I moved in. I thought it was a mistake, maybe an errant pipe. This is an old mill building, after all.
Last August, the movers heard it, too, as they helped me settle in. I think they thought it was a ghost. So did I, at first. But no, it’s a man. I know because, about twice a month, I hear him talking to his nurse. I try to shut my ears, not wanting to violate federal privacy laws by not helping to overhear about his medical condition.
Why am I telling you all this? Why, for that matter, am I even living in this place? I have a home in St. Louis — with renters until mid-2026. I also have family in California, in one of the nicest parts of the world, just outside San Francisco.
Yet, this past month, my divorce became final. It has been a challenging chapter, one that has required honesty with myself and others about difficult decisions. Like many transitions in life, it hasn’t been easy for anyone involved, and I take full responsibility for my part in it.
As I navigate this period of change, I’ve been reflecting deeply on my choices and their impact. It’s not a process without missteps, but it is one driven by a commitment to growth, integrity, and a better understanding of myself and those around me.
I’ve always believed in the power of self-reflection—not as a means of self-criticism, per se, but as a tool for learning and improvement. This journey has reminded me of the complexity of being human, of how we strive for connection and meaning while inevitably falling short at times.
So maybe I deserve the sounds I hear through these thin walls. For every cat-call and every nose-blow, it feels like penance. And yet, this space—the noise, the discomfort—it feels like the kind of Sisyphusian work that has to be done—by all of us. After all, we all are flawed. Deeply human.
That means I write every day—or most days—trying to get to the essence of what it means to be human. I don’t sit around asking Talking Heads/David Byrne “Once in a Lifetime” kinds of questions all the time. That would be pointless. But I do wonder: What does it mean to be here, in this world, now?
Take Thoreau, for instance. He went off to the woods to live deliberately, but reports suggest he was, frankly, a bit of an a-hole. Maybe he was trying not to hurt a soul, or maybe he was just avoiding the mess of human relationships. Like me, he was probably somewhere in between.
Most of us live between the pedestals we put ourselves on and the self-loathing that drags us down. We are contradictions. I’ve devoted myself to being with people I don’t know—students, colleagues, strangers. I’ve left a career in acting, where everyone knows you’re pretending, and I’ve picked up a quieter life of writing and researching—mining esoteric stuff that might only matter to me.
So here I am. Flawed. Not bad, but not good either. If this is the beginning of some origin story—not a 12-step thing, but a true reckoning—then let it begin here.
The cat girl is gone now; she moved out with her family back to their own newly renovated home, replaced by a mom with a toddler. I remember those days—vividly. They’re full of wonder and tears, sometimes loud, sometimes barely audible. A vision of what used to be.
What I know is that I’m starting something new. No apologies. Those have already been said. Instead, I ask myself the questions Jon Blais poses:
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you are willing to risk looking like a fool—for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
I want to know if you can live with failure—yours and mine.
It doesn’t interest me where you live or how rich you are.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and still be sweet to the ones you love.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself
and truly like the company you keep in the empty moments of your life.
The answer? I’m trying. Hard. I mean hard-hard.
This is where I am, folks. Searching for the longing after the ache. In an old mill building in Manchester, New Hampshire.
May it always be so.
Curated Listening:
Last week, I referred to C.S.N. in Chapter 6 of B.C.Y.: A Novel (working draft). This week, here’s the “C” with C.S.N., or David Crosby, singing about and alluding to Saint Sebastian. One of my all-time favorite C.S.N. songs. Listen to “Arrows” HERE.
This is just so beautiful and funny, Brian. Thank you for your candor. It's so relatable in every way.