Shoeless Shawty,

"Once you can drink legally, you won't want to do it anymore."

Well, that's not true. And if you were thinking of telling me that once I actually can hang out with professors in social contexts that I won't want to do that either, you're once again wrong. Even as a freshman, part of my drive to get through the undergraduate step and press on to graduate school was the hope that someday, the professors would accept me as one of their own and invite me to poker night, and to play pool at dive bars. The former hasn't happened, but the latter has. I don't think it's the kind of thing to make a habit of, but it certainly inspires warmth. As I bought everyone their second round of beers, I felt so warm: my veins were twinkling strands of Christmas lights.

Now, of course, it's different. It's an occasional and welcome treat, rather than a pressing need. I no longer spend hours on the internet, plumbing its depths for clues to the identities of rock-stars-turned-neuroscientists, or IM-harass professors who dine on entrees of infant. Nor, interestingly, do I watch reruns of my favorite television shows over, and over, and over, and over... You think there's a connection between those two dwindling interests?

I do. I think it's partially because I miss you, Shawty. I'm realizing that there is something to this whole human interaction thing...

We cycle, you and I. For months, it's all calls and emails and mutual creativity. And then for months more, most of my updates come courtesy of your cryptic status updates on the Great Allah of Social Networking. When I read them, I wonder: what could you possibly be referring to when you mention forks and prostitution? Surely it's something big. Surely, huge things are happening in your life. I'd like to know what they are, lover.

I envy your fores to India, to tropical isles, to bustling Canadian cities... You've said before that your impulse to travel to such places feels like you're running, but surely you've gained some unique insights into the state of the world through those endeavors, even if they were only incidental to your goal to get out of this place or that one... At this point, I think that if I ever experience such places, it'll only be incidental to my goal of following this person or that one out of this wicked little town.

See you soon.

I hope your holiday is full of twinkling lights and eggnog.

--Old Saint Nomad

My Hungry Ghost,

"Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us: it's our hour of triumph that brings the void." --W. James

That's objectively true, right? Isn't it times like the one you're describing that bring out the best in us? The times when you feel like you might stop breathing at any moment? The times when academia, friends, family, lovers, pull you apart in so many directions that it just doesn't feel like enough molecules comprise your body? The times when you feel like simultaneous implosion and explosion is imminent? Of course--it's only "the best" in retrospect. I think James probably knew that when he penned that particular quote. I don't think he was so naive as to think that "need and struggle" are actually enjoyable--but they are the times that we reflect on with pride and fondness in some strange, masochistic way.

trans⋅par⋅en⋅cy
–noun, plural -cies.

1. the quality or state of being transparent.
2. something transparent, esp. a picture, design, or the like on glass or some translucent substance, made visible by light shining through from behind.
3. Photography.
a. the proportion of the light that is passed through the emulsion on an area of a photographic image.
b. a photographic print on a clear base for viewing by transmitted light.

I feel like that sometimes--only sometimes, and with some people. Like a photographic print on a clear base, constructed specifically to be viewed by transmitted light. Like I have to be held at the correct angle with respect to the sun in order to be seen correctly and fully. Like not many people know what angle that is. Like I'm glad that they don't. Like I think maybe you do, and I can think of maybe two others (maybe. barely.). Like I think I'm glad that it's only a few that can see through these awkward mannerisms, and inappropriate facial expressions and beyond to what's creating them.

I think I have a new (or at least new to me) metaphor for you, and I think it's a little more accurate, a little more precise than the others: LOVE IS DESTRUCTION, which can translate to LOVE IS FALLING, LOVE IS INFECTION, LOVE IS INSANITY. I especially like thinking in terms of infection... Love/infatuation as an illness that needs to be cured. Like you have some infection that's making you incredibly feverish and irrational, and you just want to shake it so that you can start to see life and people through a clearer lens? Through the lens you used to use? Objectivity is such a need for me. To have my objective skills bound like this is intolerable. My pro/con lists feel useless. Everything feels like it's happening outside of me and my experience. This thing, this infection, has taken a life of its own, and I'm not sure what it's doing, where it's heading, what organs it's shut down, which tissues it's planning to invade next. I'm not sure how close I am to death.

(Have I taken the metaphor too far yet?)

It's not just "social" infatuation that does this either, I'm including "parasocial" infatuation as a possible catalyst too. It too can blind you, distort your priorities, change your self-concept in ways that are disproportionate. House made me forget that sociality is important to people for a reason. Rube (Dead Like Me) made me forget that I'm alive. Paul (In Treatment) made me forget that I rejected Freud long ago, and that I don't blame my parents for every neurosis that plagues me. Each infatuation infected me severely (I think that you, unlike some others, will not judge me for talking about television in these terms--I think you understand), and I'll never be the same because of them.

I miss you, lover. I'd like to talk soon. I'd like to take turns holding each other up to the light.

--M. Curie.

My perfect complimentary self,
Life often seems to sneak up on me when I feel I’m most prepared to divide and conquer its ranks of deadlines and demands. Before I know it, I’m up to my eyeballs in a stagnating stew of uncertainty and doubt. The days seem to be getting shorter & shorter all the while and there just aren’t enough hours in the day anymore.
Then there are the occasional breaks of deep contemplative insight or the like. I catch a glimpse of what I’m grasping for in the darkness. I remember how beautiful it can be when the goal is in sight. The unadulterated bliss of motivation fuels my will to endure; implicit motivation, of course. I’m struggling to find that. I’m just reaching a point in the semester when there appears to be a fine focusing of relevance/revelation. Graduation is now a more attainable goal. I put a lot on my plate and tend to juggle so many little things; I lose sight of the longer-term goals.

Also, lately I’m realizing that I have such an abundance of love letters to ex’s. Or, more specifically “dear john” letters. The kind you write to get it all out in hopes that you’ll feel better after; In hopes that you’ll feel some kind of solid closure. Except, in most cases, the “other man” I’d found was myself. Most of them never leave my computer after their initial drafts. I wouldn’t really consider many of them “done” or ready for sending. I typically only write enough to feel I’ve purged the unrequited feelings adequately.

To merge those two unrelated ideas with another seemingly random segue way, nothing is so encouraging or motivating as a letter from you, my love. They are, in many ways the opposite of these letters I seem to collect. I feel understood and acknowledged. You’ve got a knack for soothing my fears and reassuring (or at least entertaining) my hopes. I only hope I can do the same for you.

Infatuation is quite a funny beast.

I have a couple of Steven Pinker books I keep meaning to mine.
I remember hearing once a couple of years ago (and perhaps I’ve told you this already) that we developed our humanness from the particular proteins of cooked meat. The details and source of this theory have become increasingly fuzzy over the years; So much so that I’m not sure if I dreamed it up in a National Geographic special. The basic idea though, is that fire changed the composition of meat in a way that (over some time) changed the way our brain was structured and functioned. It has stuck with me for quite a while and I’m content that there’s at least some connection there. We are, after all, the only animals that cook our meat; or decide to become vegetarians, decide to eat only kosher, decide not to eat at all from sunrise to sunset or decide that a cow is too holy to even consider eating. We are the only creatures that really seem to decide anything, because we do what we want. This includes thinking abstractly/in metaphors, just generally being anomalies and becoming infatuated.

I wonder what Pinker would have to say about the origin of our gods. That would certainly seem to be the biggest metaphor of all. A mirror of ourselves, reflecting back all of our imperfections and inadequacies. Our ultimate collective critic.

More specifically than just being easily infatuated, I’m more concerned with my collection (again with the collecting) of parasocial relationships. Although, I guess most of them wouldn’t actually be parasocial; I mean, most of them know about me. I have quite a few “friends” on a certain networking site. There are many who I’ve never met in person, but many more who I only know in passing, having met only once or twice. It isn’t the actual person I’m having a relationship with, however, but the person who is presented in the “about me” and “interests” and “movies” and so on. In this way, we get along quite nicely in the memories I make up for us in my head. They are the most perfect friends because my assumptions of them are always correct & they always live up to my expectations. I promise it really isn’t as bad/pathetic as it sounds. All this happens without me putting too much thought into it. I haven’t had any imaginary (or real) tea parties with these hypothetical friends. Yet.

I really rather like this idea that Pinker presents, though. How could we live in a world composed of anything less than metaphors? When I really think about it, I can see the association with love and falling. Metaphorically, of course. If you think about literally falling, you are usually quite vulnerable after a fall. You’re on the ground, possibly hurt or disoriented, cursing whatever it was that made you fall. In that sense, you are not so much yourself. Your “self” being the enduring qualities you think of as uniquely “yours.” You are operating on more adrenaline and more raw human chemicals. So, I guess in that sense, you’re a lot more human even though not so much the unique human you’ve been conditioned to recognize. I’ve always liked the analogy of love with being on a merry go round (the kind you spin around on in parks) for the same reasons. It makes you dizzy/disoriented, you can fall off and hurt yourself, but it feels really good if you do it right or at least while it lasts. In this case, falling WOULD be the heartbreak.

--Vertigo

My Strange Bedfellow,

We're warned that watched pots never boil, and yet people still sit around watching grass grow. If this continues, we'll soon be living in a brown, dry world. All the same--I understand. Presumably, the hungry man wants nothing more than to see that first pocket of steam break the otherwise serene surface, while Walt Whitman has nothing better to do than watch things that will necessarily elude his perception. It's apples and oranges.

Funny, lover, when infatuation creeps up at the most unlikely of times, and from the most unlikely people. And by the latter, I don't mean the people that you never think about, but rather the people that you have often pondered as the opposite of infatuable. (That's my word. I just made it up. Do you like it? I hope Merriam and Webster do.)

I've been slowly making my way through a Steven Pinker book over the last couple of months. He suggests that human intelligence has cropped up because of our ability to think in metaphors. According to him (or whomever he was citing), the first emergence of metaphorical/abstract thinking was probably for problem-solving (e.g., I can use sticks for retrieving tasty bugs which are out of my reach in very small ground holes; fruit is also out of my reach; I'll bet I could retrieve it by hitting it with a stick). But then it exploded, and we started conceptualizing the entire world in terms of metaphor. At this point, nearly all of our thought is metaphorical, even when we don't realize it: "speeding through the day" and "time crawling by" refer to LIFE IS A JOURNEY; "impenetrable logic" and "barrage of questions" refer to ARGUMENT IS WAR.

(By the way--did you notice the metaphor in the second paragraph? INFATUATION IS A PREDATOR.)

But one metaphor that I've been trying to figure out is "LOVE [or infatuation] IS FALLING." E.g., "I fell for you so hard [or fast]." If we're to humor the idea that LIFE IS A JOURNEY, why is the image for infatuation falling? Is it like falling? It isn't, right? It's more like deviating. Life is a journey, and hopefully you can see at least a few paces in front of you. Infatuation is like leaving that beaten path and striking out into thicket so dense that you can barely see your hand in front of your face. Is that, perhaps, when falling becomes imminent?

But in that case, isn't it the heartbreak that is falling?

Everything in metaphor, lover. Everything in metaphors and etymologies.

I like you like a fish likes water; I need you like a wave needs sand; I miss you like Keanu misses Patrick.

--Icarus

My Partner in Nudity,

It's good to hear this note of optimism from you. I think living alone will do that to you, no? Something about not taking social interaction (even the superficial and sometimes unpleasant kind that you can get from roommates) for granted. It motivates you to pursue. (Pursue what? I don't know.)

And I like your Freudian analysis of your need to collect possessions. I think I do the opposite, but for the same reasons as you. My mother hoarded when I was growing up. We were surrounded by too much. It was often suffocating. I think that's part of the reason that even at four or five, I was trying to move out of the house and live a simpler existence (my first attempt at this was trying to build a house for myself in the backyard, made of old timbers and mud--epic fail). So now, I periodically do the cleansing that I never felt able to do as a child. I sell, I donate, I release. I minimize.

Another school year is starting for us both. I miss college--I miss being thrilled about the start of a new round of classes and people and experiences. Today is the first official day of our semester, and were I still College Lindsey, I would have been up three hours ago, showered, and ready to head to campus and meet the day. As it is, I'm making my way through too many cups of coffee and far too many cigarettes, and putting off my morning grooming rituals in some futile attempt to postpone the world from moving forward. I will fail at this attempt (you know, because it's futile). In fact, I already have. Not even eight hours into Day One, and I'm already behind on two writing projects. Soon, my students will be contacting me, needing me to answer questions that I won't be equipped to answer. And now that I'm a fourth year student, the incoming graduate class will turn to me for advice. They will expect me to have great insights for them (I know they will, because that's how I felt about the fourth years when I arrived). How do I tell them I have none? More to the point--why don't I have special insights? Shouldn't I? After being here this long?

On Friday, I went to a social event for all the faculty and students in my area. It was at my professor's house. And suddenly, I was right back where I was nearly four years ago: a visiting undergraduate, overwhelmed by the seemingly simple tasks of graciously receiving food, of being socially appropriate, of fulfilling the role of "guest." Not that my hosts weren't kind and gracious--they were. But five minutes into the ordeal, I found myself wanting to make like Kafka and turn into a bug (a small one, though), and perch in some corner, and watch but not be watched. I couldn't, though, so instead I held my friends' baby. I've never wanted children, lover, but that moment...made everything else not matter. Can we have lots of babies together? I'll bet, lover, that your lover would approve.

I can't postpone the day any longer. But before I go: it's nice to have this haven with you in the vast, confusing land of the Interwebz.

--Miss Sir Galahad

My secret sun-soaked salamander,
I just found this letter on a thumb drive amidst notes on the American culture war. Not really related, but somehow seemingly fitting. I thought it was rather appropriate considering my newly gained freedom. Which, I should add, has been pretty blissfully bitchin. Unbeknownst to noone, I have accumulated entirely too much stuff, but the more I put away and organize, the more the walls seem to close in around me. Would it seem bigger if there were less stuff? My guess is no, just less lived-in; less like a cozy home with a heart and soul.
I'd like to explore why I have so much crap and insist on clinging to certain things that have no obvious value or practical use. I'm sure it stems from my childhood experience of living like a nomad and possessing little more than I could carry in both arms.

Written around early March:
"My spicy burrito baby,
I confess: I’m slipping into old habits and my lax response time is simply unacceptable. I admit my delay is not unrelated to my recent romantic developments. It consumes my thoughts more than those substances which previously controlled my mind.
Last night, I had a late dinner of spicy Jambalaya and was actually more excited than worried of what horrible doomed nightmares would come. Instead, I had a strange jumbled dream of a sort of informal gathering. The setting was combinations of rooms & spaces around picayune & the characters were mostly old friends & acquaintances from highschool. I remember climbing in and out of a window onto the top of a bunkbed that sometimes doubled as a tree-fort.
My ex was there sort of distractedly, the way ex’s seem to sometimes float around parties. We successfully avoided conversation for a while without seeming like we were trying to, until later on, when he came and sat next to me on the top bunk. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I think the consensus was that we were both happy & agreed it was silly that we could just decide like that and make happiness for one another after all the confusion, anger, loathing and sadness. Then again, this all happened in my head… soo… who knows. I did wake up with more calm & reassured, thinking about him, than I have in a while. It was a feeling comparable to closure & I only hope that whatever he dreams he had last night left the same impression.
In the same mindfulness of closure, I decided to draft a letter to another ex to brave the waters that have long since been calmed with the passage of time. In doing so, I realized how difficult it was to just get the trapped thoughts out without feeling like there were some expectations attached. The truth is, I don’t want anything but to get it out there.
Upon waking to the harsh reality of lazy and perpetually drugged roommates, I found a mountain of disgusting dishes and the fact that the liquid clothes detergent had fallen into open container of cat food put me over the edge. I went to rinse out the food container in the inaccessible sink; I instead brought the broad plastic bottom down hard into the sink, breaking a plate & a few wine glasses. In my most recent visit to my therapist, a familiar update sheet asked me how well I’d been getting along in all the important areas of life: academic, social, familial, etc. I mentioned a strong urge to harm someone else in regard to those horrible people I live with. All of my free thoughts are consumed with how blissful living alone will be and how much happier my life will be when this is reality. Being realistic, all of the worst troubles I face currently center on an unsatisfactory home life. I like the house okay & the location is wonderful, the trouble is just sharing it with two really repulsive people I barely perceive as being human. I’m conflicted because I know they mean well & really want nothing more than for my absolute happiness. I know they don’t realize what makes them so irresponsible in my eyes; the way children can’t understand why their actions are sometimes socially unacceptable. Comparing them to children only goes so far, because the fact is they are adults. Adults with poorly developed superegos, but fully grown adults, nonetheless.
I know my anger is misplaced & it’s not fair to get so angry about things they do if they don’t know there’s a problem. It doesn’t change anything and it certainly doesn’t help me cope better, but damn it felt good. Almost immediately I felt some relief for all that had built up. The more I am out of the house, the worse it gets when I get home."

Since then, my thoughts are consumed less with my intimate engagement, while my beloved and our relationship is more important than ever. Since I am no longer so burdened with room mates, I don't look past myself for an escape.
My recent birthday brought me full circle, back to the people and places that I knew and occupied in my past life. I saw a lot of the people from the dream, still doing their old thing and being rather content with the degree of change in their life. At first, I felt so removed from this old scenario that I started to realize how much I was completely changed by my experiences. We opened the window to the past, but I was unable to fit through it, nor was I sure I'd want to. Not only was I so far from this past in which I really didn't like who I was, but through the window, it looked mostly unchanged. After a while of settling in and remembering what it was really like without thinking or doing anything, my two selves merged and it felt like one of those unrealistic "if I only knew then what I know now" scenarios.Not surprisingly, my ex was not there. Even less surprisingly, I never sent that letter I drafter to the earlier ex. About a week after I started it, I found we were no longer "friends" on a particular networking site. I doubt I will ever send it for fear that it will illicit laughter and disgust.
Ironically, a few weeks ago, I saw the ex who was at the dream party outside of the coffee shop. He casually said "Hey," which I answered with an "..." Later, I got a text from him suggesting we 'do coffee sometime,' which is obviously a euphemism since neither of us drink coffee, really. Nice thought, but the last text he ever sent was literally "you're dead to me." While less deeply offended and hurt than just plain amused, it made an impression and stuck. A friend and I agreed, no response would be the best response as anything else would open up the lines/wounds.
I thought of the letter I began drafting to the other ex. What if my reaction was similar to what his would be? Would that be so awful? Would no response to an attempt be better than not making the attempt..?? Is getting it out there and rejected better than keeping it in with an implied rejection??
Does anyone know or care to know the answers to these questions?
The entrails of my mind are tangled around the affections I feel for the world.
My heart is on fire with it's death and desire. Who knew that wicked bitch mother nature could be so forgiving?

Confidently growing in the direction of the sun,
Anacoe Narcissus

My Welcome Doppelganger,

Did you know that depressive states evoke seemingly effortless and beautiful poetry from you? It's as if your language was specifically created to elegantly capture the melancholy that Voltaire spoke of.

The pattern of starting new chapters, making breaks with old lives and starting new ones... This is something I'm all too familiar with. I wonder if we've experienced that particular kind of change in the same way (yes? no? probably both, says the ExtraTerrestrial). Recently, I resolved to attempt a new kind of break. Usually, the break is with people, with a place, with a habit, with an obsession over a psychological theory (or theorist, ahem) that I now realize is fake or subpar. This time, the break is with myself: specifically, the deluge of journal entries I've poured out over the last 5+ years.

Since my freshman year, I've been writing in the same journal. I've accumulated over 1500 entries since then. I've written so much, at so many different moments, in so many different states, that I've written about just about everything in my static experience, from just about every perspective. Until a few days ago, I felt comforted by that huge wealth of self data, and proud. I liked being able to flip back to my 2004 or 2006 self at whim, to search this catalog of Me for any and all dreams I'd ever recorded. When depressed, I would look for other entries that confirmed that particular experience. But I realized, finally, how destructive it is to have the last 6 years so accessible. Because that accessibility of past selves has started to define me. When I'm on the brink, and in desperate need of a fresh pair of eyes, I don't look for novel solutions, or to the future. Instead, I drown in the past.

So I started a fresh journal two days ago. It sounds like such a negligible change, but it's felt monumental for me. Because it was painful, for one, letting go of all of that history. But two, it finally feels like I can start something based on the goals that I currently value, based on my ideal self...it finally feels like I'm in a position to do that. And I no longer feel like I have to justify everything I write by saying "I know this is incongruous with what I've said before, but..." and "I know that saying it's incongruous is something I've said before, but..." and so on. I've given myself a chance to experience my life anew without self-consciousness.

For the first time since I started graduate school, I'm excited--and more importantly I'm curious--about the future.

--Self Explanatory

My Sorbitol Seducer,

Today I feel strangely in touch/tune with the world and equally/simultaneously disconnected from it all. I admittedly wrote this line a few months ago, but I realize now that this is my static state of experience. I noticed it more when I was stoned all the time and consistently in tune with the world of incongruence and inconsistencies. All the minute disconnected details would form a coincidental network of synchronicity.

I bet it would amuse you to know I often (still) scrutinize my reflection. Most often, I see my prepubescent or teenage self staring back at me with lonely, uncertain eyes that seem to ask what the hell happened. “Where did the best years of our life go? Who are you and what did you do with our future self?” they ask.

When I see my subjective unsophisticated self he always seems just as sullen and defeated as I seem currently. I should start drinking again to put some depression in my veins to go with all that self-pity; get some creative juices flowin... I feel less creative than I’ve ever been. Almost past the point of no creation, approaching bohemian, again.

Sometimes I smile, laugh, frown, scowl or simply glare at my reflection just to see the subtle changes in the only face I can ever remember having; changes no one else could ever detect because of the slow and steady onslaught of time and the elements. I’m the only constant in my perception of self. The world has gone around the sun dozens of times, spinning around on it’s axis incessantly, countless stars were born while many countless more extinguished their light. The world and culture around me have changed in so many immeasurable ways since my earliest memory.

It’s sometimes hard to believe that this is the same world I’ve always been subject to. Further still, that this is the same body I’ve always occupied. So many of my former selves I’ve left to die in places I’ve been; places I could no longer grow and had no choice but to abandon.

I simultaneously am and am not all of my past selves, living all of those past lives in places and times that only now exist as memories; like Schrodinger’s cat... alive&dead, at the same time. I am clearly alive, but how can I be certain I did not die long ago? I’ve often wondered and argued with my internal voice about my state of experience. What if this is the waiting room between lives or a kind of ironic purgatory? What if we’re all dead, waiting to be reborn? Who knows the difference; if there is any? Dax Riggs said “All any one of us has got to do is die.” Or live, depending on how you look at it. I prefer to acknowledge the worst-case scenario. The first American male to female transsexual, Christine Jorgensen (as his former self, George Jorgensen) said of his discontent in a mistaken body before the transition, “how can a futureless life go on? Yet it does. Year after year the body lives while the soul dies.” I often imagine I’ve long since died and my experiences are but a fabrication of my last moments of brain activity. It’s actually quite a romantic and comforting thought to me. Is that macabre of me, darling?

Up to a certain point in my life (broadly, around the time I moved away from the coast on my own to start college) I would transition from situations through a very distinct break with my former life. I would leave the people I knew and the reputation I’d built to start a new chapter. I feel like I’m now at a crossroads of abandoning this pattern or redefining and repeating it.

When someone important in my life (possibly the most important thing in my life) tells me they want to be the one person outside of myself that I can always count on to be there and I know it’s genuinely heartfelt promise, it terrifies me. Am I scared I can’t reciprocate such selfless devotion while facilitating my own needs or am I convinced I don’t deserve it? Perhaps both. Perhaps I covet their genuine selflessness.

I’m so full of myself and down on my poor pitiful and unfortunate life, I pretend to do something about it... to take control and steer away from the iceberg of dependence, but there’s always someone there who will feel sorry for me because I’m so alone in the world. I’ll inevitably always take advantage of those who are closest to me, whether he or I am aware of it. I am my own worst critic/enemy/antagonist. I fail.

I’ve been thinking recently, that it’d been too long since I cried & felt really awful & powerless. I was due. My water broke. Not surprisingly, I don’t feel better. I feel awful ashamed. I do this to myself. This too shall pass. I need to disappear for a while on a vacation from myself.

--melancholic and misanthropic

Future Genetic Collaborator,

If you think you’re curbing my enthusiasm with these little interludes, you are dead wrong. Dead wrong. I do try to restrain myself, you have to know that, but when you write, it inspires a little burst of manic, creative pleasure that I can’t help but share. Immediately.

It tickles me to know that you also accumulate small collections of letter fragments. Your reasons are different from mine, but all the same, it’s yet another secret shared something that we weren’t aware of until this very moment.

I want to talk more about this personal progress idea, even though it is entirely possible that we have beat it into the ground at this point, I with my flatlining and you with your endearing self-aggrandizing (oh, don’t take offense, lover—you deserve some aggrandizing). After reading your response(s) to this issue, though, something new (or at the very least, new in a Clive way) occurs to me. There was a theme that you kept trying out in different keys, about being static, but in a dynamic sort of way, or frantically changing in the same ways, or forever progressing in a thousand different directions from the same point. Something along those lines.

And what occurs to me that did not occur to my former self (AKA Debbie Downer) is that the line is flat, but not futilely so. We—as in you and I—sometimes become frustrated, I think, at the fact that for all our ambitious laundry lists of change, we remain the same in all the important ways. As you said, we really are still the people from our childhood photos

(and I must fugue here a little, and tell you that during my most recent time home, I had the task of sorting through several crates of my old belongings, and found a photo album that I’d made from a trip I took with my Mom when I was around 6 years old, and that the thing that struck me most about the photos was how unabashedly joyful I was, and I wondered for a moment what the trajectory was, exactly, that has taken me from that point to this one)

in the most consequential ways. Debbie Downer, in her ignorance (which I now scorn and distance myself from) assumed that this indicated that progress was an illusion. But you hit on something with the idea of self-acceptance. Perhaps the reality of ourselves doesn’t change, but our view of that reality does change. And with that comes a thousand microscopic mutations in our internal and external experiences that make this progression far from futile.

As in, I buy all the same kinds of books that I did when I was a freshman in college. But I do it now because I want to read them, not because I want to buy them, or own them, or be seen with them. As in, I have all the same discussions about favorite movies, and music, and authors, but they are about the pleasure of mutual self-disclosure rather than self-presentation.

As in, I’ve always had hidden, repressed portions of myself, but they are intimate opportunities rather than shameful secrets. Once, I went to see a movie by myself (which movie isn’t relevant), as I am wont to do, and when I returned to my apartment complex, I didn’t immediately get out of the car. Seeing movies late at night, and in a publically isolated sort of way, always feels mildly dissociating for me (but not in an unpleasant sense), and I needed a moment to collect myself. I flipped down the mirror from the visor above my seat, and looked at my reflection. It was an odd moment. I recognized my face, but it didn’t look familiar. I stared at myself, and as I watched, my visage changed. I saw my mother, and then I saw my father. For a moment, and only a moment, I grasped what it meant to be the product of two unique sets of DNA. I looked, and in a moment of true (fear? panic?) enlightenment, I saw that I was simultaneously beautiful, and terribly disfigured. I noticed the dilation of my pupils (and isn’t this exactly how Dorian Gray must have felt looking at his portrait?), and then I realized that my own movements were slightly out of sync with those of my reflection. I frowned, and it did as well, but not at precisely the same moment. I started to form my mouth into a smile, and the reflection’s pantomime was terrifying. I remembered a dialogue from a movie I’d once seen about doppelgangers, which in turn made me think of Freud’s writing on the unheimlich, and I remembered that someone had once said (and maybe it was Freud) that things are uncanny when they are and simultaneously are not. Precocious children (at once children and not, adults and not), zombies (alive and not, dead and not, human and not), and mirror images (you and not you): all are unheimlich (which, ironically, means both unheimlich and also heimlich). My reflection, which was both me and not, was both adult and childlike, masculine and feminine, my mother and my father, real and imagined--


--repressed and denied.

Unheimlich: German; literally, “un-home-ly.”
Refers to experiencing an object as at once familiar and alien.
Derived from the word
“heimlich:”
1. homey, familiar
2. concealed, deceptive

My fierce and frigid lioness,

After a long hiatus, I've decided I can no longer neglect a response. I feel silly after so long and think it best to pretend I never remembered. Or rather, I’ll pick up as though there was no delay seeing as I have half-written portions of unsent letters from months ago. I have (read: used to have) trouble accepting something as finished enough, in most (read: all) aspects of life. I’m getting better with (read: over) that.

My responses have been lagging because I always give priority to something I can put off (read: academia) over people and my relationships have suffered because of it. To put my studies/future/self above all else... isn't such a bad thing, is it? In theory, no. Not especially. But I say "I NEED to work on ______" and it never really gets done. I'm just making excuses.

After it builds up for a while, I cave and confess. "I've been making excuses... but seriously now, I've got this new stuff to get done." Repeat cycle.

I’m starting to think there are more hidden, repressed portions of your self than I originally imagined. I was a little taken aback by your steamy intro early this year and the ease with which you took me in and broke me down.

Pictures of my younger selves fascinate me because they are, collectively, everything I once was and everything I had potential to become. I can see the pain & heartache that was to come as easily as all the love and awe in my little sparkling blue eyes, perhaps even more than my now greenish, hazel eyes will reveal. As we get older, it comes more natural for the expressions of our eyes to lie; to save face and keep other inquiring minds out of our one last true stronghold: the mind. As much as I know (deep down in the depths of my current self as expressed through my inner child) that my evaluations of baby pictures are based on what I now know and hold true about myself; there is still a part of me that wants to believe that even then, the white warrior was so steady and true on a sort of predetermined path; a trajectory leading ultimately to my current sense of self. It’s a nice thought that also reinforces my maxim that EVERYthing happens for a reason.

I feel as though with each passing day, I become more honest, more genuine and more accepting of myself and with the world. As my character becomes more polished & squeaky clean, in my own mind, I begin to more accurately assess the tarnished world and all the broken people it has been producing. It’s so isolating to think “if I can do it, what is wrong with the rest of those assholes...”

Oftentimes, I wonder what will become of all the portions of myself floating around on the World Wide Web after my physical body has died. I would reason that this thought consumes my worries more often than that of all my physical belongings.

It’s not as hard to imagine the common routine of distributing a dead person’s things to those who remain behind. I’ve done it a few times and anticipate a few more times. While it was nice to be able to sift through all my father’s things and decide what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to pass on, I experienced a strange kind of emotion not so unlike guilt when assembling my pile of dead-person things. I took things back from him that were once gifts I gave thinking “this will be mine when he’s gone.”

I think sometimes that perhaps I am too preoccupied with having an enduring legacy, which (I thought until recently) really just boils down to being published. I really hate my obsession with thoughts like these. It’s as if living on in the hearts and the minds of those who have been close enough to know me personally, is just not enough. So recently the thought of children at some point in the future seems especially appealing. Who else will love and care for you so unconditionally to keep your memory alive long after you’re gone?

In many ways, my life feels like it's leading me in endless new directions. But at the end of the day, it's exactly the same direction. I'm still navigating and refining my niche to integrate my laundry list of lives. It's a tedious, daunting task. Even the old ones are constantly being recycled and reshaped into something new and useful. I try not to throw anything away for fear that I'll need it one day.

It's ironic that you should talk about your state of mind, as I was just thinking along these lines. I was close to tossing it because I kept coming up dry for ways to explain it. At least ways that wouldn't sound like the usual metaphysical "the same ole mind of mine is currently occupying an almost unrecognizable body" rant. I think you might get what I'm thinking, but failing to say. I feel like the way I think in relation to the world hasn't changed much in the last decade or so. On the other hand, how I think and feel about myself, the world and other people has changed immeasurably.

I think you and this Clive fellow have got it figured out, in a sense. To live right now, in every new moment as it presents itself. Not only living in the exact current moment as it happens, but also experiencing the world in that precise occasion as a new beginning with unlimited potential.

I feel like I'm always waiting for the next break. Like I'm always waiting to cross into some other threshold of experience. What I don't often realize is that longing will never be fulfilled. The grass is always greener, I suppose, in the impossible pasture of the future.

Isn't that funny, how we always feel so much more confidently in control and "here" than our past selves that write those silly, jaded journal entries? We laugh at our former selves and feel better that things are different now. We've grown smart & quick enough to leave them behind. Having spent three weeks on the other side of the world, in a completely alien culture, I felt like I had returned transformed, both physically and mentally. Yet, I have still to pin-point the source of this change. I promised myself I would be less self-conscious than ever after having been scrutinized so closely and accurately read for white tourist filth. I realized I’m only a little less concerned with other people and I’ve decided that’s something being American (and living in the U.S.) just does to you.

I re-read a response to an old acquaintance I wrote recently. I honestly felt like the confident and comfortable voice projected into this casual correspondence is noticeably different from the voice I was using less than a year ago. I feel I’m closer to who I want to be (seen as). Whether I am him yet or not, is debatable.

Love always,

al⋅ways [awl-weyz] –adverb

1.every time; on every occasion; without exception.

2.all the time; continuously; uninterruptedly.

3.forever.

4.in any event; at any time; if necessary.

Etymology: c.1350, compound of O.E. phrase

ealne weg "always, quite, perpetually," lit. "all

the way," with accusative of space or distance,

though the oldest recorded usages refer to time.

Your faceless and forgetful friend.

Ice Sculptor,

Sometimes, I feel lost in the world. I go out to movies, to coffee shops, to a park, and I feel remote from the people I see around me, from the people that are actively defining this age. The randomness of breezes and traffic violations and talking and movement makes me think that if I removed myself from the world equation, my predictions would be more accurate.

How often, lover, do you drive at night? And not on the weekends, with the drunken, rowdy college students yelling out of their windows about this sports team, and that victory, and trying to convince everyone of the most important truth of all: how fucking awesome spring break really is. And also not in the early evening, with the middle-aged fathers driving home from their long days of work, going to see their middle-aged wives in their crisp, clean aprons. Rather, on (for example) a Tuesday in mid March, at 2 in the morning. At that time, all the traffic lights seem to operate especially for you: you never encounter a red light. They are all green, as far as you can see, and the red ones change upon your approach, bowing, letting you pass because they know who you are, and where you’ve come from, and your gnawing need to get where you’re going. The lights in the businesses you pass are all dimmed deferentially.

It's the most consequential that a person can feel. It’s the closest to utopia that one can be.

Except, of course, for the moments when you know, know, that you're in the presence of someone who enjoys being in the presence of you. Not because of an endgame, not because they're striving toward genital satisfaction or monetary advancement, or fulfilling a pseudo-altruistic need to "help," but because they simply derive some small measure of selfish pleasure from spending time with you. And knowing that you are selfish in precisely the same way.

--Where The Fish Go In The Winter

Forgetful Lover,

"Abandonment complex" isn't quite the right term, but I'm always waiting for you to get bored. Not with me, perhaps, but with whatever we're doing. I'm waiting for you to leave the old and start something new. I'm content to stay in the same spot, doing the same things, recreating the same projects indefinitely. But you, you're always starting new lives, finding new niches. I can't keep up.

My perception of time is all fucked up. It's as though my current state of mind has been my state of mind for a long time, but I'm just now, at this very moment, realizing how it is different from the state of mind I was in just before it became what it is...

It's like that guy... Clive Waring? Or Wearing? Or something? The guy who had really severe short-term memory loss--as in, it often didn't last more than a few seconds. He kept a journal, and every time he started a new entry, he always said that this moment, this one happening right now, at this very second, was the first time he'd been awake in a very long time. All the hundreds of entries before this one had been fakes or something close. But this one, this was the genuine article. This moment defined a profound change in his life--in fact, the beginning of his life.

I feel like we're all Clive, really. The present moment always seems to outshine and overshadow the past ones. Even those of us who keep journals look back on past entries, and we see that they express the same sentiments that we're feeling now, but we discount them. "Surely, I couldn't have understood that statement as I do now. I couldn't have meant the same thing by that as I mean now."

(Maybe that's just me; maybe I shouldn't speak for everyone.)

But what if we did mean the same thing? What if we are continually waking into a single moment, stunned each time by the profundity of it? Though the really stunning thing is the monotony of life. The real profundity lies in the fact that we can find any joy along this flatish line on this 2D graph.

--Debbie Downer

MY FACELESS SADIST:

I get the feeling that this was your plan all along: To sit behind the screen with your whip and mask, making my anticipation grow until it felt like it would rip me in two. And then, a calculated number of days later, you let me feel it all in a rush, releasing me from its treacherous bonds. If it was anyone except you, I might retaliate,

(because how dare they turn the tables)

but because it’s you, lover, I must admit that I have pleasure—thank you.

I like the baby picture kick that you’re on. Some personality theorists in the first half of the twentieth century speculated about the significance of the childhood memories that we choose to retrieve and rehearse and revive. So in order to get a glimpse into the current state of someone’s psyche, they would ask: “Tell me about your earliest childhood memory.”

And some might say: “I remember being in my crib. I don’t know how old I was, but I was in a crib. I remember lying there in the semi-dark, and studying the cobwebs on the ceiling being gently blown by the air conditioning.”

Or, “I remember being on my back under a Christmas tree, and looking up at the lights twinkling through the plastic branches. There was a distinct feeling associated with it—so tangible that it was almost a smell: the scent of anticipation.”

Or even, “I remember riding a go-cart with my oldest brother. I was too small to drive, so he put me in his lap as we rode around our field. I felt safe, and so proud to be included in this activity with him.”

Ostensibly, each of these memories would give some crucial insight into the current state of mind of the speaker: “The speaker is infatuated with isolation; is infatuated with sensation-seeking; is infatuated with those perceived as superior.” Though I can’t endorse this method scientifically, or claim that it is diagnostically useful, I do like the implication that memories are at once the product of what has passed, and also what is present. They are not snapshots of our lives as they were, but instead paintings of our past selves, the subject and brushstrokes guided by our present selves. (Paintings that made it worth it to leave the garden.)

It’s only slightly different from the magic of looking at baby pictures. Though the photos are in one sense objective, aren’t your careful evaluations of the image, the details you deem significant, in some sense more revealing about your current self than your 1 or 2 or 3 year old self? “There,” you say, “Look how happy I was.” “I was a chubby-assed little baby.” “I really loved that shirt (and of course the implications of that are obvious).” “I was still me—even then, I was me.”

Of course, you weren’t really. You haven’t been that particular you for a long time—both psychologically and biologically, you have sloughed off many selves since that picture. But it’s reassuring, the comparison. It’s reassuring to know that you existed then, and that you were so similar to your current conception of yourself. Reassuring to see hints of this emerging identity, or that emerging preference. We need those photos, those reassurances that certain things remain constant. Just as we need holidays: it’s comforting to know that at least one day a year, we know that we will, eternally, be doing the same, pleasurable things with (hopefully) the same pleasurable people. That is one aspect of our lives that we will always have, no matter how ridiculously, rapidly, relentlessly our lives change.

~ The Masochist Who Cares (For The Face Behind The Mask)

My darling confidant,

I apologize for my expected tardiness in responding. Just imagine the usual path of the Pony Express was delayed a bit longer because of the recent hoopla of the holidays. Norman was perhaps a bit too far off the beaten, snow-shoveled path; they just decided to wait an extra week or so. They figured it would do the inhabitants good to wait a while, for once. Think of it that way, and it seems rather sweet. Perhaps you needed a reminder of how good it felt to be surprised, just when you thought things were beginning to fizzle. This one’s too good to go flat, though I’m pleased to report.

While things are finally beginning to settle from all the festive goings-on, I’m less ready than ever for this break to end. The colorful bulbs of Christmas are finally being strung up and tucked away into a cold, dark storage unit and I’ve never been more ready to see them go. It was the best winter I can remember in recent memory and it couldn’t possibly last long enough. The icy chill was easy enough to shrug off, but more joints and muscles are sore from sitting awkwardly hunched over in front of the monitor, waiting for my life to start happening.

This year’s winter was perhaps even better than those innocent childhood mornings when Santa was even more mysterious and mythical than my current sex life. However, it feels damn good to know the truth after the fall, even if we were kicked out of the garden...  God’s ain’t got nothin’ on what’s growin’ in our minds.

 

Typing like a madman, my thoughts are in a frenzy when I really get going: something that doesn’t happen enough. It’s all fits and starts and constantly referring back to your comments and feeling ultimately like there’s nothing I can add to what you’ve already said, so flawlessly. You say everything just as I’d love to be able to, with a voice so familiar and steady, it’s hard to believe it’s not my own. Your words always edify and intoxicate me.

I’m very much relieved you’ve decided to break out of your impersonal shell.                     

It distracted me from the real point of these coded correspondences: essentially just for us, individually and together, to make sense of our uncannily poignant and indisputably stirring mutual perception of the world. I can’t imagine our secret sessions ever being any less than wholly soul-fulfilling.

 

Inevitably, I doubt you will ever realize the wonders you work that never cease to humble me.  

You constantly remind me of who I am and who I most aspire to be. 

You know I have more reverence for you than any living person I’ve ever known.

And if you didn’t, you certainly should.

I long for your diction like babies long to be held.

You know, we never got those promise rings we talked about.

In an equally random and distracted end-note, keeping with my current and oft utilized stream-of-consciousness approach: I so love the exciting prospect of a new relationship that blossoms out of meeting new and interesting people. It serves to renew my faith in the ability of other people to be unexpectedly and pleasantly engrossing. It reminds me that I cannot consistently expect the worst from people, even though perhaps I should. Instead, I’m always thinking that this time, things will be different. I see new people in my life as the ideals of what I would hope they could be... and as we both know too well, that is almost always grounds for disappointment. I need to fine-tune my ability to be pleased with what is concretely there in others, without any of that other pointless waiting, hoping and wishing.  What else is the internet for but to maximize our longing?

 

-Your envious admirer,

consistently ed·i·fied (ěd'ə-fī'd)

1. to build up, establish, or strengthen a person, institution, etc.; to uplift

2. to instruct or benefit; to inform or enlighten intellectually or spiritually

Etymology:

Latin aedes 'building' + -ficare 'to make'