A note that today's episode engages with suicide and suicidal ideation.

If you or someone you know needs help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available by dialing the number 988 24 hours a day.

Thank you. 24 hours a day. I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

One of my MFA instructors found life difficult.

I spent an evening with her just two weeks prior to the event of her passing.

That shifted something in me.

A desire to find it all endlessly breathtaking.

I have not always, but I remember not wanting to mechanically conduct myself in the hapless fog,

instead to see beyond the surface of things.

She gave a brilliant reading at Bennington College that last night I saw her. I had recently moved to Vermont, newly married, new job, and new child.

I drove down at her request. She was unaware of the two and a half hour distance. I heard a new direction

in her work. The host of the event noticed as well. He spoke of the courage in her new poems.

With a mutual friend, the other featured reader, the three of us talked politics over beers. We squeezed into the

booth of a makeshift bar on campus. The other reader eventually retired to his room.

I was happy to have a chance to catch up one-on-one. But three glasses in, her mood changed. Meanwhile, Steely Dan blasted loudly

from a jukebox. A small knot of people flailed playfully in a circle. The spinning disco lights

made the mostly empty dance floor even sadder. She confided in me. She leaned in

close, spoke in low tones about her difficult winter. Her eyes were drawn. I felt her hurt.

I felt her sadness. Eventually, she changed the topic to my good fortune, a coveted

job in a beautiful part of the country. She said the summer brought new opportunities for her.

She planned to house sit for friends and write, to live frugally with her young son.

Sitting there, I wished I could get her to see beyond the sources of her pain.

...