Dear______,
This letter is just me sitting here, listening to WFMU. I love that they're a wholly independent station and that there are no commercials, none whatsoever. Public radio has those “this programming was made possible by” quasi commercial things; WFMU doesn’t even have this.
Sooner or later, I tell myself, some words will come to me. So far, there is nothing. Nothing stacked upon nothingness.
There are few feelings worse than this. It always makes me feel as if there will never again be anything to write about. Then I tell myself that there is nothing of any real consequence that I've done in my life, and that I will die forgotten, my ashes in some warehouse someplace.
I retreat to my ash box. Because I'm non-corporeal, I need little space to write. I scribble letters to those whose lives were full of memorable stories. I write about trying to find meaning in the mundane things I did, and sometimes I take those things and add some fantasy to them.
When these souls meet in the gathering places of those who did something with their lives–places that look like the reading room of the New York Public Library–one may say “yeah, I got one of those letters from Derek where he imagines what it would be like to bake bread that's part of a death row inmate's last meal.”
This soul reads it, and the other souls–some of them really good writers who lived dazzling lives, by the way–smile and say “nice…good one.”
And I keep writing.
Yours, Derek.
Written April 2, 2026