HELLO.

Sorry for the runaround. I just wanted to make sure we could talk in private, you and me. Brain to brain, if that’s OK. It’s your brain that’s reading this right now on your computer or your phone, or bless you, maybe in print, feeling the coarse weight of the paper stock under your fingers, which are your brain’s fingers, with their thousands of nerve endings. The truth is it’s always the brain, reading or writing. It’s always the brain talking or eating, having sex, not having sex, lying about why, apologizing for earlier, walking around the apartment wondering where did I leave that thing, saying how could you do this to me, asking is this really happening, asking what will I do without you. Brains softly crying together. Brains kissing brains goodbye.

IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING trying transcranial magnetic stimulation for yourself, I think you’ll find that its appeal lies in treating your depression not as a psychological disorder, or even a chemical imbalance, but as a basically electrical problem. Sure, you can talk to a therapist or a psychoanalyst about all the things that make you want to die. They will help you narrativize your pain, or the jagged border around your pain; if they cannot stitch the hole inside you, then at least they can help you hem the edges. Or you can get a psychiatrist, and they will write you a prescription for an antidepressant, and you can spend months or years negotiating a dose with the animalcules who operate your cells. But the magnets are different, brain. They promise direct manipulation of the voltages inside you, much closer to physical therapy than to an SSRI. What the magnets say is, it’s just physics, dummy. What the magnets say is, what you need is a good kick in the head.

Autumn is waning, and the trees in the park outside are giving up their leaves like joss paper