Sometimes you just lose things. Sometimes you wait and sit on stuff and it drags along, it gets buried in the clutter and you regret that it happened. Always regretting. Over a year ago, we had George Saunders chip in a contribution to our Lasso’d series. Because we’re known to get backed up frequently, the piece didn’t get placed where it needed to and since that time, it’s become very lost. After celebrating a wedding anniversary yesterday, it returned to the picture in a hazy form. The note was brief, only a couple of lines that reflected what he had been moved by that week. It’s always as simple as that. We ask what moved you, what did you love this past week. Saunders answered succinctly that he and his wife had just celebrated their anniversary and I recall that he mentioned that he realized that she still moves him the same way she did when they first met. It’s always stuck out and though the original message is lost and it couldn’t be reproduced here verbatim, the sentiment is intact. I think he also mentioned something about a food, some kind of food, but that’s when we’re talking fuzzy. Just this past week, I revisited an interview that Ben Marcus conducted with Saunders in The Believer’s Book of Writers Talking To Writers, where Saunders discusses his methods and realism. He mentions first love and the passage of time and it seemed pertinent, in a way, to his short note — the lost one.

“The basis for literature is the fact that all of our brains are essentially, structurally identical. First love in 1830, in Russia, beneath swaying pines, is neurologically identical to first love in 1975, back of a Camaro, Foghat blaring. That’s why that wonderful cross-firing occurs when we read.”

Later in the interview, Marcus asks Saunders how Buddhism plays into the way he thinks about his writing and Saunders answers, “I find Buddhism inspiring in that it says: Everything matters. Suffering is real. Death is imminent. Pay attention to everything as if this was your last moment on earth. And then I see writing as part of an ongoing attempt to really, viscerally, believe that everything matters, suffering is real, and death is imminent.”