I’ve lately been rereading some of my favorite short stories, from a collection by Richard Yates called “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.” In “No Pain Whatsoever,” Myra visits her husband Harry, who has been quarantined in a tuberculosis ward for more than four years. Normally, Myra takes the bus to visit Harry, but on this Sunday she has been driven by three friends, including Jack, her lover, whose wandering hands in the backseat of the car mortify Myra’s sense of decency and propriety. Inside the hospital, thin and haggard, Harry is nonetheless in high spirits. One of his old friends has returned well from surgery and Harry too feels little pain as long as he keeps still. When Myra asks him if the doctors have told him anything new, Harry chides her. “You can’t count on anything in this business, honey, you know that.” They spend most of their hour together in silence.

After leaving Harry, Myra hears the strains of a Christmas carol sung from inside the ward: Hark the herald angels sing / Glory to the newborn king… Myra is wretched with sobs, alone in hoping for Harry’s recovery, a better love, and probably, a child. But while Myra has been visiting with Harry her friends have found a nearby roadhouse; they pick her up from the hospital drunk and thrilled to be alive. Myra wipes away her tears, and letting Jack set his hand on her breast and then between her legs, she implores her lover, “darling, let’s go right home.”

I mean to talk about anonymity, which can been euphemized and romanticized until a picture springs into our minds of a joyous and contemplative fellow, arrayed in a snappy argyle sweater, wandering the streets of Paris, wondering at the beauty of the world. (This is me most days.) But what is anonymity except temporary peaceful loneliness? The pleasure of being nameless in a crowd is the awful, sneaking pleasure we feel at the end of volunteering at a tough school, or worse, at a poor man’s funeral. The voice in our heads that says, “This is not me. I am better than this. This fate will escape me.” It is fine and well to be anonymous so long as we can go home to a place where we are loved and where our name is not unknown. Where we can give voice to our dreams and aspirations, or better, where they are anticipated.

There are easy cures for loneliness practically at every turn. But like a stubborn tuberculosis, loneliness consumes us from within, a nagging ragged breath of despair that can be scrubbed away in a night, but whose stain reappears in the morning. The joy of anonymity is the re-emergence into our comfortable little circles, and though the exercise in loneliness thrills us, we will never completely let out the leash that ties us to our better lives.

–NICK HOY

I am searching for a friend between the ages of two and six.  Idea being that we’d have about the same vocabulary, the same hold on French grammar, and, truth be told, a lot of overlapping interests.  Course they’ve got some of the same social conventions over here that we’ve got over there so I couldn’t just, say, wander over to the park and jump in on a game of marbles.

In other news, I’m older than I was one year ago.  Not to mention that I’ve got an apartment, a couple odd jobs that almost add up to a living, and a vague sense of loneliness that makes me feel very mature.  The whole growing up thing is, of course, belied by the fact that Nick and I share a room and that our beds are close enough together that we can do a high-five before turning in for the night.

On weekends, I’ve taken to doing day trips on my own, making brief forays into solitude: hiking Montmartre, getting lost in the throng of an open-air market, reading in parks and cafes.  After a few hours alone, coming home is always something of a let down.  I ride the metro with my chin perched on my palm, eyes an inch above whatever book I’m supposedly reading.  I sit there thoughtlessly and stare out into a forest of calves and ankles: pantyhose, varicose veins, pinstripe slacks and circulation-slowing jeans, pleated skirts and the houghs of knees.

These brief moments of forgetfulness are incredibly peaceful: long exhales of not thinking.  Part of it is, no doubt, the fact that I know no names and no one knows mine.  But what really gets me are those brief moments of weightlessness, as if at some point in the afternoon I’d outrun myself, turned a corner and left behind all my needs and desires, my convictions and neuroses.  I dub these my amoeba moments.  It’s a single-cell feeling, a sense of being in complete harmony with what’s going on around me, a protean feeling that I can be exactly what I want to be because I don’t really want to be anything at all.

Of course, the thing about exhaling is that, sooner or later, you have to breathe back in: bills, family, housekeeping, living. And the thing about being an amoeba is that I’m not.  I’ve, like, evolved, for better or worse, and what I realize is that these moments of forgetfulness are really just moments of nostalgia.  I’m invisible to myself only because I’m everywhere: a beautiful Francophone on the metro is a potential bride to be; a display-window cake is there only for me; a stony general on horseback is my doppelganger in a different time.

It’s like I’m a child, still imagining the world as something that bends to my desires, that grants my every whim, that’s been created for me, to please me and only me.  It’s odd how what sometimes feels like complete resignation is really just another version of wish fulfillment.  Like waking with a start from a dead dreamless sleep and thinking, ‘Hey, that wasn’t so bad,’ and then settling back in, warm and rested, between the covers

–BOB BOREK

Before cutting the umbilical cord that binds us to Leland, we wanted to say thank you to everyone who poured so much effort into the magazine over the last few years, and to wish the best of luck to those who have taken it over.

Running Leland is a lot like flying a kite.  And we spent two years sitting on the beach, taking turns with our thumb on the spool, admiring a kite held aloft by extraordinary talent that was not our own.

–NICK & BOB