In defense of uneventful

you toast empty space, then drink it down

This fictional piece was loosely inspired by a song my biological father, Charles Brauer, wrote called Bertha. It’s a bittersweet little tune about spending a birthday alone. I encourage you to give it a listen—it’s the kind of melody that lingers with you long after.

Charles vanished from this world just nine months after his 36th birthday, his body never found. I explore his life and the mysterious ways it intertwined with mine in my forthcoming book, Unfixed: A Memoir of Family, Mystery, and the Currents that Carry you Home, set for release through Empress Editions October 14, 2025. But you can preorder today!

Also, shout out to

Eleanor Anstruther

,

Nathan Slake

,

Deirdre Lewis

and,

Silvio Castelletti

for inspiring this more experimental (for me) style of fiction writing where long sentences, attention to detail, and stream-of-consciousness lay bare both the tension and emptiness of our inner landscapes.

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You awaken and remember it’s your birthday. But that’s not your first thought. Your first thought is about the garbage and how you forgot to take it out last night. With eyes still closed, you open your mind’s lid, trying to recall how full it is, the stench, if it can wait another week or if you need to break the warm blanket seal, throw on a jacket and boots, and drag it to the end of the drive. You convince yourself it can wait—not because you’re certain, but because snow is falling and the temperature outside your skin and on your skin feels exactly the same, and it’s just too damn nice to break that perfect, undisturbed thing.

Your second thought is about your 36th, and when you hear the garbage truck roll on by outside, another dumpster truck in your mind unloads. You wonder if you should’ve planned a party, but you don’t want a party, but you feel stupid for not having a party. You remember you invited a lady friend over for dinner, but forgot to mention it’s your birthday, so she’ll arrive empty-handed, maybe a six-pack of beer, and you’ll have a fine evening in each other’s company. Maybe you’ll tell her, but only as the night, or the next morning, is ending. Part of you is upset no one thought to throw you a party, but then you’ve never thrown one for anyone else, so why would they. And the expectation to feel something on your birthday—something special—and how it can kill a perfectly good day, it makes you want to forget it altogether.

You finally get up and stand at the window to watch the snow. It’s heavy and perfect, and you can’t decide if it makes you melancholy or happy. You realize how much of your life you’ve wasted trying to answer this question. You remember once getting the shit kicked out of you behind the tavern, face down on cold snow under a streetlight, the sharp, hot stabs of pain held inside the slow, slow falling of snow—and how fucking beautiful it all seemed. For a second, it feels beautiful again. But then you ruin it by wondering if you should write the scene down, make it into a poem. Or maybe a song—damn, it could be hit. But maybe too cliché. And just like that, it’s gone.

So you go back to the window, back to something quieter than your head: a plowed cornfield as far as you can see, and beyond it, high hills unscathed by glaciers. The Driftless Zone. People call it that, an odd name for a place, as if it has no aim or purpose—as if the land itself decided to step aside when the glaciers came carving through the Midwest, dragging ice and boulders like God’s own wrecking crew. Here, in this pocket of western Wisconsin, the ice gave up. It left the hills and valleys untouched, free to remain as they were, as they still are. Driftless, people say, like a boast. You wonder how it must feel to be like that—unchanged, spared from the pulling and tearing of everything around and inside you. To just be as you are and let life grow from a wide, unquestioned place. It’s a nice thought so you decide, because it’s your birthday, to try to give yourself a gift today—the gift of not questioning anything at all. Something in you widens.

When the dog jumps on the bed you realize you haven’t taken him outside. You think maybe you should put on a few layers, make the trip a bigger trip—a hike, a birthday adventure or better, throw together a pack and find a spot down the valley for some winter camping, make a goddamn memory, something to write home about. But then you remember your gift to yourself so you throw a jacket over your tee and plod out with him, standing aside each other to enjoy a pee. The dog sniffs around, and you give him time, wandering toward the creek. The TV you shot is still sitting there and you wonder if it looks trashy or if it’s a kitch reminder to not waste your life. But you were in a state that day—you didn’t hate the show, you hated yourself for watching it. For being anxious, for being less. Be more, do more, seize the day, you’d told yourself, especially after the umpteenth publisher rejection. Your greasy, toasted cheese fingers pulled the cord from the wall, and carried the box out the front door, grabbing your shotgun on the way. It had no business ruining your life so you introduced it to a 12 gauge cartridge of buckshot. Six inches of snow soften it now. It almost blends in. But you feel guilty, like you first polluted yourself, then the creek bed, being human always ruins something clean. So you haul the thing into the garage. Maybe you’ll try to fix it.

You whistle the dog into the garage and the two of you sniff around organizing tools, you swore you’d keep your garage clean but then you got used to looking at trimmed bits of wood, miscellaneous screws, random tools not hung in their place, and when you look at it now it’s not clean at all and you’re glad about that because it’s something to do. You find an old chest on a shelf—you save everything for its potential—and open its musty scent of hope. Middle-school essays, rolls of undeveloped film, a box of letters on lined-paper from girls you thought were cute—except Susie Mae, you didn’t like the way she looked when she played the flute. You grimace at how shallow you used to be but then wonder if you’re any better now. You hear yourself say, I can’t do this anymore, but you don’t mean it, do you, you only wanted to hear yourself say it and see how it felt. The last time you opened this chest you cried, but now it seems silly and you see a bonfire in your future. You close the lid, and when you catch your reflection in the broken mirror propped against the wall, the cracked face looking back at you isn’t disappointed, like you thought it’d be. He looks charmed.

When you and the dog go back inside to build a fire, the cabin feels warm but not complete, because a man needs more than pot-bellied heat. You quick grab a pen and pad and do write that one down. But then the phone rings, it’s your lady friend; the roads are too bad, getting worse, so she won’t make it. You feel disappointed, then relieved, and then weird for feeling relieved because now you won’t see anyone on your birthday, and that sounds pathetic. You should be more of a someone by now but when you look out the window again you notice how easily you breathe. You set the table for two anyway. Sit down. Light a candle. Raise a glass to your companion. You laugh at your theatrics, a boy playing house, toasting empty space. Then drink it down. You lose track of time and it's weird because usually time is so hard on you but today it's letting you off easy. The candle flickers. The dog curls at your feet. You don’t know if you’re happy or sad—at least not in a way you need to name—while outside, the hills could care even less, driftless and free. For once, you don’t try to carve meaning out of them. You just let them be.

Rocky Mountain foothills of Boulder, Colorado (sorry, didn’t have any photos in my archives from the Driftless Zone)