My Thoughts Keep Turning Towards The End

Dear K,

I went to the coast for bit. I went to the great metropolis. The bright lights and tall towers. I saw the rats in the gutters and watched homeless men struggle through the subways. I saw the statue of liberty and slept in a building that never seemed to end. I ate dumplings. I was yelled at and mocked. I was hugged and greeted. I was made to feel at home and simultaneously alienated. The great heaving mass of humanity all around me had little or no effect, I was not suffocated or lifted up, I was simply holding onto the pole in the middle of the subway car.

But despite all of these things I feel sucked dry. I am empty and passionless. I feel rootless and transient in my hometown. I don't know how people do this.

Right now I can't sleep, again. I love my insomnia sometimes though. It bevels the edges of my depression and makes loose associations and I feel fluid and liquid. Is it strange to say that I am sometimes addicted to a sleepless state? I am. I am hooked. I love to sleep and dream, but even more than that I love when my dreams rise and bubble and burst forth into my waking consciousness.

This is America. I have no reason to get up in the morning other than the fact that it is what I'm supposed to do. I don't like my job, I like the money they give me. I need to do something else though. I am not built for that corporate world.

This might sound depressing, but I'm not broken up about it at all. It is warm outside, and I'm lying in bed with my windows open. I am alone.

Do you ever fantasize about your death? I find myself fantasizing about my funeral sometimes, oh it isn't as macabre as it sounds. What I really do is imagine what everyone I knew will say about me after I'm gone. It is an abstraction on imagining what someone says about you when you leave the room. I also fantasize about leaving behind some sort of legacy. I want someone to say something about how I did one activity better, or more uniquely than any other person ever has. I want to write a great book, and paint, and I want to have biographies written about me. I want people to be interviewed about knowing me, and I want them to look into the camera with surprise in their eyes and say, "Him? Oh well he was such a dear. You'd really never know he was thinking all those great thoughts if he hadn't written them down. He'd usually call me and ask how my day went, and I'd jabber on and on, and he'd listen patiently, and then more often than not he would change the subject or hang up before I could get anything out of him, he was such a dear." And she'll finger a smart necklace of pearls around her throat.

Do you think you will remember me after all the years of our lives?

You don't have to,

K

trade organs for oceans

Dear K-

I slipped off the map again for a while. For some reason, despite the warm weather, my confidence took a dive and I had a series of days where I couldn’t bear to make eye contact with anyone. And so I measure my days by my footsteps, focusing on the laces of my shoes, content to hear a voice but not address the eyes. I suppose when I’m done with school and I am a licensed doctor I will have to be able to stare people in the face and speak plainly. But for now I am content to look at my hands fumble with the dilating drops as I explain “this might sting for a few seconds”.

The warm weather has got me anxious, eager to move on to the next stage in my life. It also has me drinking a lot more. I still am not feeling well, and neither is my mother. My father is old. People come into our practice every day and occasionally a few weeks later I receive notice that they have died. I suppose it shouldn’t shake me up so much. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “things die. All things die.” So it goes. Someday I’ll be old and grey and I hope I can look back on my life and not only feel no regret but also feel content with what I have accomplished.

I am sorry I cannot come visit you anytime soon. It makes me anxious and that makes me feel worse, and I apologize for my neurotics but I’m not sure what else to tell you. I take full responsibility for my tattered nerves. Maybe once I am feeling better (if I’m ever feeling better) we can get a visit worked out. But for now I am not allowed to drive long distances by myself.

Waiting for blood to flow to my fingers,
-K

The Hollow Center Of My Torso Calls Me In From The Dark

Dear K,

Spring is coming soon, I can feel it unfolding, right there in the hollow behind my navel where everything is felt before it happens. I feel it.

I know that we're going to see each other soon. I can feel that too, in the empty space in the middle of my torso. I cleaned my apartment tonight, and I thought about whether I was going to let you have the bed while I sleep on the air mattress. I haven't decided yet, because my bed is really comfortable, and it is actually the main reason I'm not homeless and on a never ending bicycle trip around the country.

I feel like such a fool to fall prey to the seasons like I do. I'm starting to fill up with hope, and that's a foolish thing to do. Every spring so far in my life has been filled with failures of every sort. I feel like the Cubs at spring training, maybe this is my year, and we won't know until October that I've wasted another precious season.


I hope flowers grow around you soon. And I hope that the birds come back to sing through the gentle quiet rains. In the end I hope you run in the sunshine and forget all that trouble snow.

As for me,
We'll see how everything shakes out in October,

-K

Dear K,

Are these even ourselves up here? I can't be all of myself at one time, I am too many contradictions. I pull myself apart. I'm writing something now. It is about the search for redemption, but why does that matter in the end? If god doesn't exist then we're all just corpses in the ground, and if Jesus was right then we're already forgiven by the time we die. Why is it important to redeem yourself?

What have I done. Where am I going. Why am I anywhere.

I read your latest letter, and it was so beautiful. My eyes watered as I read it and I held my breath, and then I read the poems you wrote down for me out loud to my empty apartment. I don't think I pronounced everything right, but it was beautiful anyway.

I'm going to buy some envelopes and stamps. I'll start physically sending things to you.

If we're in a play who is the audience and who is the author? Do you believe in reincarnation? Of course not, it is a very silly notion. How about this, instead of reincarnation there are great cycles that run through all things. There are even cycles of types of people, we're all variations on a theme. I think I might be a variation on Edgar Allen Poe.

If you do believe in reincarnation, then you'll understand that I am ready for nirvana.

How long until I can escape?
I feel trapped at every turn.

-K

heart consumption

Dear K-

You’re an interesting case. It seems you want to be close and you want to be intimate-you need those relationships in your life that make you feel worthwhile. But at the same instant there also exists a dismissive trait, one that pushes away and fears that close attachment can only bring disappointment and regret.

Sometimes I read your letters and wonder if you’re still writing as me, or if you’re writing as you. Do you understand what I mean? Sometimes I feel so similar. As if we’re both portraying this painful and delicate theatre performance, and right now you’re in the middle of Act Two, at your character’s lowest point. I’m in the background for now, merely moving about the scenery. And for now I am content there; I’ve been distancing myself from family and friends again, as I periodically do. But your character, desperately fishing about for his heart among the sewer muck, is at an all-time low. He’s moaning and dreaming of something better, but the dream is blank and white like a bank of new fallen snow.

What of Act Three? Where is the redemption? Will it come? How long is this miserable second act going to draw out before we finally break for intermission?

I’m sending you scraps of my life, in the hopes that it will make you smile. I want you to pick up the broken pieces of my days and fill your nights, finally finding sleep among the bits of me you find in them. I’m not sure what else to do. I wish I could send you pages upon pages of letters and drawings, but I feel like that would be a less accurate portrayal of what my life is truly like right now. It’s not flowing or flourishing. It’s flaking off, like rust from oxidized metal, and I’m sweeping up those little bits and sending them to you. Hopefully it doesn’t make you angry. You can just toss them away if you’d rather.

Warmer weather brings lighter hearts,
-K

Untitled

Dear K,

Why am I so lonely? I have friends and relatives. What is so important about having a physical relationship? Remember that person I talked about? The one that came back into my life. Well I cut her out again because it was too painful otherwise.

We were caught in a cycle of pain, and I wanted out. I still want out. I want out of this plan I have for my life. I want out of everyone's plan for my life. I want to be able to write for days and weeks at a time without feeling exhausted by every line and every scene. I want to be thin and beautiful. But mostly I'm tired.

Spring is around the corner, maybe I'll be happier then.

Every year feels worse than the last.

Regrets and wishes keep me up at night,
I wish I had someone to soothe me to sleep,

K

Continuity Of Self

Dear K,

That is the way I have always been. I've never felt a continuity of identity. I'm not the same person I was yesterday or a couple of hours ago. I wake up several times each week wondering who I am and have to spend the first hour or two of my day reminding myself of my name and how that person acts. My mornings are filled with panic when ever I'm interacting with someone I think I know, after every action I ask myself "Is that something that 'I' would do?"

It is like waking up without a mask, only to find out that the face underneath is blank and featureless.

I am constantly amazed by the assertion of identity by others, because mine is actually so frail and thin. I have journals filled with things I've done and the way I felt about them at that moment, and all of it is useless when I wake up.

I think my greatest fear is that I'll wake up one day and not be able to know who I am ever again.

I want to look forward to your warm linoleum floors.

Waiting,
K