If you had been wearing reflective tape
Maybe I would not have hit you
With my car.
Idée Fixe
Music cascading from above. I am not sure how much I care, and we are careful not to mention it. Really I can only think about hunger and about my thesis. Obsession is becoming my obsession. I will finish Obsession today, and two Lacan essays. If there were enough hours, I would also read Monomania. Sadly, no. Lacan is destroying my brain via a simultaneous expansion from within and a relentless bashing from outside. I suppose if these forces were equal, like the air pressure in and outside a balloon, I’d be fine. They must not be. There must be some imbalance–I am not eating the right foods and, consequently, I have an excess of black bile. Metonymy, metaphor. Displacement, condensation. Verschiebung, verdichtung. Parallel construction will never die.
This Summer In Retrospect
Musical things I went to:
- Land of Talk, May 31st in Portland
- The National, June 2nd in Boston
- Bear in Heaven, June 24th in Portland
- Arcade Fire, August 1st in Boston
- The KahBang Festival [The Gay Blades, OKGo and others], August 13th & 14th in Bangor
# of miles put on the car: 2629+
# of trips to Funtown: 2
# of times trapped in Portland in the middle of the night: 2
# of trips to Ellsworth: EIGHT
# of rainbows seen: 3
Movies I saw at the cinema:
- Vincere
- City of Your Final Destination [Me Omar!]
- No One Knows About Persian Cats
- Greenburg
- Cyrus
- Dinner for Shmucks
- The Red Riding Trilogy
It’s so difficult to remember things.
Oh yes, # of wisdom teeth taken out of my mouth: 4
Hehe.
Letters
I found a letter in my mailbox. No postage, no return address. Only my name in sinewy handwriting in the center. I thought, “Is this from God?” and I opened it and I realized it was not from God. The letter reproduced:
Dear Sir,
We are two very similar people. To clarify, I’ve been observing, and I’ve noticed that we have many common interests. It is as if neither of us are individuals while the other lives.
Have a wonderful day,
Clyde
I looked all around for Clyde, but the street was empty. I folded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, put the envelope in my pocket and ran into the house.
A few weeks passed, and I forgot about the mysterious letter until another one came to me in the exact same fashion. The letter reproduced:
Dear Sir,
I didn’t hear from you after my first correspondence. I wonder if you got your letter. No, that is a lie. Forgive me; I saw you open it and read it right there by the mailbox. I know you got your letter. I am only hurt because you did not write back.
Have a marvelous day,
Clyde
As, kind reader, you may expect, as soon as I saw the particular format of the envelope, I recognized it and I sprinted for the house again. I read it in the parlor room instead of in the street, standing there, out in the open, without defense and in my bath robe, (knotted once in the very center and pulled into a floppy bow).
I was not sure what to do, so I did nothing.
The third letter came two days later:
Dear Sir,
I am displeased. Perhaps you do not understand the nature of the situation. Please forgive me once more. This is my fault. All my fault. I should have explained thoroughly.
Thoreau, postcards, old photographs, post-apocalyptic literature, sweaters, day trips, The Smiths. You like these things, yes? So do I. I don’t think we are the same person, but I am not sure. I am sure of one thing: if we are the same person, one of us will win out, and one of us will not.
Clyde
I scorned this man. He made me feel less of one, first because he claimed I was his copy, and then because he forced scorn onto me. I scorned him.
I received the fourth letter yesterday.
Dear Sir,
I have taken up a lover. Never mind about all that other stuff.
Have a superb day,
Clyde
I haven’t gotten any more letters.
Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now
Inexplicably sad today. I started thinking about the end of things on the drive home. “Free Four” came on the radio during my thinking, which ironically helped a little because it was so coincidental and funny to me.
The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime.
You shuffle in gloom of the sickroom
And talk to yourself as you die.Life is a short, warm moment
And death is a long cold rest.
You get your chance to try in the twinkling of an eye:
Eighty years, with luck, or even less.
The universe is talking to me, but it is doing so in a joke. “How silly you are being, Sarah!” In retrospect, I should have laughed out loud.
I am 20 and I feel very, very old. Everything I do is a waste of time. What isn’t a waste of time? There must be something, but I don’t know what.
God save the directionless.
Where is Michael Gambon when I need him?
Michael Gambon is not my imaginary counselor, but I must have one, because he just handed me this list printed in neat, upright cursive on a piece of paper torn from a notebook:
Junior Year:
- Decorate your room to your extreme satisfaction.
- Don’t drink as much Coca-Cola as you normally do while at school.
- Don’t count calories.
- Stop treating yourself like shite.
- Go to the gym.
- Retire by midnight on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Get plenty of sleep.
- Keep up with your studies.
- Put less thought into whether or not you look okay.
- Keep room neat enough to be functional.
- Protect the downtrodden and defenseless.
- Read more.
- Play more video games.
Private Conversations with the Universe
will be the name of my novella, maybe. The universe is talking to me again, and I don’t want to share with anyone. I will anyway. Life has seams, and you can see them if you look closely enough. When I find a seam, I realize reality isn’t real. Everything around me is a copy of a copy of a copy, and that’s okay, because if that is the case, then life has a blueprint. An outline. You find a seam, you’ve got a small piece of the whole. Foreshadowing and symbolism and irony are artificial, yes, but they occur outside stories; they occur artificially naturally. They are instilled by some greater being, and thus are real. I don’t believe in God. I believe in a sentient universe.
