THE ANNALS OF HAROLD

— ONE . . WHEN WERE U LAST BORED? — . . . for Halloween, Gaby dressed me up as a girl. I identify as unflappably game for all FUN’s exigencies that I would normally eschew if my freedom were foremost in the decision-making: — yes, sometimes I have to be dragged to a party. But mild suffering fallows the soul, — feeling every DRIP of time’s molasses so acutely, U become skeptical of death, How the hell is my life EVER gonna END if I’m still sitting here & it’s only been three minutes , — enriching Ur soil for impending fecundity. . . which is why the prospect of “having a bad time” is irrelevant to me. . . We went to a Halloween party at her friend Lucas’s apartment. The theme was vaguely Coraline (2009) ; Gaby was the Pink Palace Apartments. I was an old spinster who lived inside her: Mrs. Forcible. I hadn’t slept the night before, and I had been at the gym from 5:30AM until 12PM. I was tired. It was one of those days where idle hands become sinward tentacles: U can’t do nothing but jerk off & doomscroll. I had 45 minutes of sprightliness in me. Obviously, usually, there’s the ebrious cure: U bored, GET DRUNK! But I was 28 days sober, — my pre-Humpty purification was nearly complete, — not even itching to drink. I talked to her friends, shimmied my shoulders in what surely resembled dancing; but by 10:30PM, I was COOKED. I took a geriatric seat in the corner: next to one of the other attendees’s grandmothers (we were the only two sitting). I had already awarded myself a gold-star for not complaining, not pressing Gaby to leave the party; I was just gonna quietly sit back & feel the full brunt of BEING. In my mind, Gaby had NO CLUE I was feeling like I was in the War of the Triple Alliance, suffering horrors, “some comrades were eaten alive, their bodies, their faces, their viscera fattening those little worms, causing at first itches, which made them tear off bits of their rotting flesh, and later unbearable pain, which they had to endure in solitude because not even the doctors would get near them.” We left the party around 11:30PM; as we stepped outside, I was greased up, ready for KUDOS: surely I would get points for all my silent endurance. We got in a cab to go home, and I said, “I’m so tired. . .” “Really?” Gaby said, “I couldn’t f*****g tell.” I looked over at her. She goes, “this is U at the party.” And she slumped into a mouth-agape droopy-eyed C-shape. I said, “that hurt my feelings. . .” She goes, “oh my god. 99% of the time I make fun of U U laugh hysterically, how am I supposed to know when U R gonna take it seriously??” “U have no compassion for me!” I said, thrusting my head back dramatically & trying to fill my eyes with tears, — so that my mascara would run. “U were such a DRAG at that party! I don’t want U to come if U R gonna be miserable.” “I NEVER FEEL MISERABLE! BAD EXPERIENCES DON’T MATTER TO ME. EVERYTHING IS EXISTENCE!” “Well everyone sure thought U looked miserable!” “I just can’t believe I don’t get any points, when I sat there all night, not even complaining, while I was completely MISERA—” I covered my mouth. “SEE! U WERE MISERABLE!” — TWO . . WHAT DO U DO WITH MISERY? — . . . when I was a sophomore at Miami University, there was a girl in my dorm, Becky, who was a bit of a torment. She had a comically awful last name I won’t cite because if I tell U it was Farhtcock U won’t believe me. Every day I would wake up at 4:30AM, — often sleeplessly shaking off a dozen beers, — and trudge to the dorm’s common area to work on my horrible novel. Becky Farhtcock was an insomniac; something awful & secret must’ve happened to her because she had a Pixar lamp tattooed on each calf, both encircled by an inspirational quote about survival like, “oh yes, the past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it.” I must admit back then I was enamored by private anguish. . . She discovered my schedule coincided with her still being awake, so she would come out to bother me; — once she said, “so Ur a boxer, does that mean I can punch U in the face?” and she punched me in the face. After that, I opted to just write in my room; typing furiously, loudly in the DARK, while my roommate Jacob tossed-&-turned, grumbling annoyance. Becky & I went on one date. She needed a Halloween costume. I had a car. A car I was so reckless with, I accumulated $2,500 worth of parking tickets in a semester; the Parking Services Office called me in simply to put a face to their cash cow. Once, my car was towed 3 days in a row. When I would come home from the bars, I would take the car for a spin. . . My joy ended when I soberly drove the car under a school bus on the side of the highway in Columbus. I totaled it; but that’s a story for another day. . . Becky hopped in, and we drove out to Hamilton, OH to go to the Halloween store. Slowly we discovered we had absolutely nothing in common; worse than that, any attempt at humor, from either side, would be met with interminable seconds of silent incomprehension. We made it to the Halloween store. She had absolutely no difficulty choosing her costume: she was gonna be a SEXY SOLDIER. I thought she was doing a bit. “A soldier, why?” “I love the military,” she said. On the way back home, we stunningly found ourselves bumper-to-bumperly jamstuck: there was never traffic on that road. The lifethread that often feels like a way-too-short piece of floss (unusably sad) in those moments when U ecstatically click with another human being, when U happen upon a supreme bit that leaves both of U with tears in Ur eyes & a cramp in Ur belly, feels, on the flipside, — when U find Urself in traffic with someone U just realized U hate, — ENDLESS: let me cut this s**t short & die. I turned the music off because I was so sick of everything. But when it was silent, we heard a scream. A sustained, aching, helpless scream that got louder with each forward lurching inch of my car. Finally, when it was at a window-rattling volume, we saw the source of the traffic: a car in the median of the road with a completely shattered windshield, with a globular indent like a meteor had crashed into it. And lying next to the car: a man, covered in blood, being tended to by paramedics, screaming like he was in more pain than anybody had ever experienced. I said, “oh my god. . . he’s awfully stoic.” She didn’t laugh. — THREE . . DOES LAUGHTER HAVE LIMITS? — . . . I wrote a short story about my failed date with Becky. It was called “I Hope We Don’t See a Dead Body” : the narrator, uncomfortable with the silence of the car ride, inexplicably blurts, “I hope we don’t see a dead body!” and of course, at the end, they’re driving back & they see the victim of a car crash, screaming in pain. The narrator says, “well at least he wasn’t dead!” His date doesn’t laugh. . . I didn’t think twice about using the real man’s real suffering as a symbol in my story. I submitted it to Inklings , — the literary magazine where I served as a business manager so INEPT, I once accidentally embezzled $250. Inklings submissions were supposedly anonymous; I hadn’t submitted anything since this poem my Freshman year. When it came up on the screen to be discussed, one girl started laughing; her attempts to stifle herself made her laughter contagious; soon the whole room was laughing at my poem. In exultant concord at a reality I was excluded from: my poem was so bad it was f*****g hilarious. They didn’t even need to vote. When “I Hope We Don’t See a Dead Body” came up for discussion, my chortling enemy said, “I have a lot of problems with this piece. . . the narrator is a f*****g a*****e. He’s like making fun of this girl for being boring, and he doesn’t even realize maybe HE’S the one who’s f*****g boring! It’s supposed to be like satire I guess, but it’s not funny, and the whole thing ends up feeling empty.” Satire? I was shocked at that word. In my mind, satire mocks something, and the result is U end up thinking the writer is smarter than what he’s mocking. I thought my story was a drama about people not being a… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

HOW TO BE A WRITER! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

I MET MATHIAS ENARD This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

NELSON RODRIGUES This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

JAVIER MARIAS & MORE. . . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

VASTLANDSS !!! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

WHY ME STILL MATTERS This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

CROSSING THE VASTLANDS This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

MARLOWE ! MARACANA ! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

HUMPTY DUMPTY BLAH BLAH BLAH This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

THOMAS CARLYLE This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

ALEXANDER POPE This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

ARE U HIGH RN DO U EVER GET NERVOUS I HEARD U This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

TURNT THIS WKND IN DA HAMPTONS This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

SHEILA HETI BEAT US IN CORNHOLE This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

TOP 10 ODYSSEY This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

PARADISE IS ALWAYS LOST, SUCKER! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

F**K LOSING This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

— 1 . DO U KNOW WHAT U WANT? — . . . there’s a feeling that often comes over a young man: I am here for something GREAT; in the midst of all the animate debris we call humanity, I, unlike everyone else, am here for a SPECIAL purpose . . . . The young man is filled with ENTHUSIASM, in its most ancient significance: filled by God . Only thing left to do: prove to the world how special U are. But how? — HOW: provoker of DESPAIR. . . burbling with nothing to POP for; U: the pointless volcano. Maybe U take off, start walking. That’s what Sean does in The Walk Book (2026) , “what if I didn’t turn around when I got to the end of the day’s walk, what if I kept going, stayed tapped into that wakeful state, of seeing the world clearly and simply, of thinking and writing and speaking while face to face with the world, in direct contact with the wind and the sun and the snow and the road. . . what if I walked perennially into new spaces and just kept walking.” Now the young man has an extravagant & lofty QUEST: — a way to prove to himself & the world how special he is; and maybe, thru unmediated contact with nature & humanity, he can learn something. . . a lesson he can bring back and TEACH. As long as there have been men, there have been wanderers; the storyteller is the first wanderer who returned. Ulysses wandered for 10 years. But as G.K. Chesterton points out in Heretics (1905) , “the real Ulysses does not desire to wander at all. He desires to get back home. He displays his heroic and unconquerable qualities in resisting the misfortunes that baulk him; but that is all.” Ulysses is a fully formed man; he knows EXACTLY what he wants: to get the f**k back home. The spirit of adventure doesn’t drive him forward because he already has a home! He knows what he’s looking for. But by the time Dante puts Ulysses in hell, humans have developed a completely different relationship with eternity. The crucifixion’s romance cursed man with a nagging, palpitating glow : like Jesus, I am uniquely & irrevocably SINGULAR & vital to the structure of the universe. . . now Ulysses is off with fervor, to gain experience of the world, learn about man’s vices and their worth. — Now we wander for transcendence. If I expose myself to nearly 30 miles a day of walking in the nemetic sun, annihilating my feet, accumulating sweat & sunburn like layers of sediment, commit to doing it ALONE, man against the road, fighting tedium & fatigue; maybe, at the end of the trial, like Dante, I will be eye to eye with the structure of eternity, or, “Near the end of the unnamed country road I walk alone, I sit on a cement slab overlooking a creek, aside the carcass of a completely shattered snapping turtle. The range of shell shards is baffling. I get up and start moving the pieces together, to reconstruct it, conduct some makeshift burial. Till I’m interrupted by a pickup truck that comes flying around the bend, that I hadn’t seen coming, that honks as it passes, savagely crunching my arrangement.” I’ll find out this material world is f*****g hard. And I need some HELP. — 2 . ISN’T IT ANNOYING THAT WE NEED OTHER PPL? — . . . there’s nothing more humiliating than asking for help, admitting we’re too weak to solve a problem on our own, that we are no lions, but terrified little turtles, tucked away in our shells, trembling. — In Eddie Huang’s Come Undone (2026) , Hubie is at a different crisis point than Sean the Walker. He’s almost 40 years old; he’s spent over a decade wandering, confirming his specialness in the world, but he’s still lost because he has no HOME, “I had to get ahold of myself but was fully incapable. It’s moments like this, pissy drunk at eleven A.M. on a weekday, wandering the canyon, when it hits me that I worked my ass off just to become a full-grown baby man who has way too much time to stare at his emotional needs.” Life’s initial crisis: being born into a family. Sometimes all subsequent crises are re-enactments of the first, trying to suture the harm that hurt U early, — which no lapse can balm. Chesterton says the family is the perfect institution simply because it is uncongenial, “The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born. This is, indeed, the sublime and special romance of the family.” Nobody can deny: in some families, there is no sublimity: we cross from uncongenial into life-deforming. Hubie’s a fuckboy who struts around posturing, joking, acting like an a*****e because deep down he feels like he’s the little boy who would run off to the Red Roof Inn with his mom to eat ice cream after his dad beat her up, “I didn’t call the cops and I didn’t fight back and she never left him. . . My mom would get three scoops—pistachio, pecan praline, strawberry—on a banana split with fudge, caramel, wet walnuts, whipped cream, and a cherry on top. Mom was a real pretty b***h until she got fat eating ice cream when we ran away. ‘I don’t know why you keep going back, Mom.’ ‘I have nowhere to go, Hubie. I stay here for you.’” Hubie wants to find LOVE: which for him means HOME. What’s Ulysses without Penelope waiting for him? He’s a deadbeat sailor. Hubie hasn’t been able to find what he’s looking for his entire life because he can’t admit he’s WEAK. The hardest thing in the world is to admit Ur weak when U’ve been weak, when U’ve been helpless, “Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. It has been supposed that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by extending our ego to infinity, the truth is that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by reducing our ego to zero. Humility is the thing which is forever renewing the earth and the stars.” But how do U have the strength to say: I am a worm, when U are, indeed, a worm? — 3 . WHAT DOES THE WANDERER LEARN? — . . . it’s amazing how many people help Sean the Walker during his outrageous voyage; it becomes impossible for him to cling, anymore, to his reckless & heroic autonomy, “Feeling like there’s something totally foolish and indulgent and obstinate about what I’m doing, what I’ve been doing—especially if I’m not even able to uphold the essential aspect of what I’m trying to do, of not needing anything, of showing one can move through the world not needing anything, with no money, with only your two feet, sleeping out. Something tragic and totally deflating about just how much I’m suddenly needing.” Sean the Walker feels tragic & deflated because he’s not learning the lesson he thought he was gonna learn on the walk. He doesn’t confirm his inklings about his own remarkability: that he is the POINT of eternity; rather, he learns he is a branch of eternity; ineluctably connected to all the life & world around him: NEEDING, and reciprocating need. He learns about CHARITY, and therefore learns how to write, “Charity is a reverent agnosticism towards the complexity of the soul. . . . And the novel is a creation of the mystical idea of charity.” — Both Hubie & Sean are rescued by their Penelopes. Sean’s, who he left back home in Philly, happens to be on a road trip with her sister, and she picks him up in Colorado, “I almost start crying when I see her. She’s crying. I don’t know why she’s crying. I ask her. ‘We passed you on the road earlier, and you just looked so. . . sad. Sitting there by the road.’” Hubie’s Penelope, Janine, picks him up from the proverbial side of the road. — Why do we fall in love with the people we do, “Science cannot analyse any man’s wish for a pork-chop, and say how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. Man’s desire for a pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven.” Women are not pork-chops, of course, because pork-chops can’t break U down and force U to … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com

LEONIDAS DA SILVAAA This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com