Every Which Way

Approximately two months ago I found a package in the mailbox at my apartment. It was buckled in half straining at the sheet metal walls holding it, a thick wad of papers stuffed into an envelope, clearly addressed to me but with no return address and no postage either. My mail key opens the mailboxes of two other tenants in my building, but I keep mostly to myself and did not expect that either of them would have given me this package. It also seemed unlikely that the landlord would have sent this to me, since he seemed to like having nothing to do with me at all. This left the postman, but this too was unlikely, a dedication to the precepts of his employment would keep him from leaving a package like this without having sent it, stamped, through the system proper.

This was the first mystery I encountered that day, the origin of the package. I was coming back from my class, a morning two hour discussion of Humanism and "Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment Thought". I wrestled the package out of the mailbox and heard a pop as the sheet metal sprung back into place where the bulky envelope had bent it awry, fumbled my keys into the locks of the front door, of my apartment, uncoated, put my shoulder bag on the floor, the package on my bookshelf, and so forth, my ritual of returning home.

My apartment is a modestly sized but well-appointed bachelor in the midst of the Toronto neighbourhood "The Annex". Hardwood floors, high ceilings, water radiator heat, an inexplicable second refrigerator built into the cabinets under the kitchen counter, huge windows, many bookshelves. I'm an avid reader, I guess you could say, a book junkie. So I was sort of happy to open up the package and find the papers inside to be filled with several handwritings, dates, it was repackaged letters, some epistolary compilation, good. Wide variety of paper sizes, folding patterns (from when they had been in other envelopes), paper types (airmail thin, resume thick), each page with a page number and date written in thin black block letters in the top right hand corner by the same hand, ordering all these varied sheets together into a structured compilation. Underneath the date and page number was a code of some sort.

So my shoes were off, I was sitting in my comfortable chair by an open window. It was mid summer, but in Toronto that really means late spring, our seasons are pretty much four months behind the pop-cultural perception of persephonic peregrination. A warm breeze of impending dry summer wriggled in through the screen, birds chuffed and huffed outside, a dog, cars passing. Children playing their lunch break games down the street at the lab school.

I was feeling intellectually stimulated! My humanism course was almost always a fierce contest of wills, arguments and spinning tales of logic and logic's limits, citations from broad backgrounds, it was a small class and we made up for that with large conversations. Often we'd spend an hour or two after class walking around campus continuing our arguments. Eager for more thoughts and ideas to chew on, I had sat, feet up on my bed, nestled in the chair as I said, holding this thick dark orange envelope.

First game: discerning aspects of the author's intent by examining the handwriting. Thin black ink, some careful pen, maybe even for drafting. The kind that is held carefully, too much of a tilt restricts ink flow. Block letters, but not careful and trained like architect's writing. Someone who is used to easy communication by speech, but I'm cheating, I've already read the letters and the whole thing, but still, even then I suppose I could have thought "Here is someone who is used to typing or talking to people and who is suddenly aware of the need to communicate effectively through text. Suddenly terrified by some knowledge, some thing that must be expressed, not able to turn to friends not able to post some online journal entry, has to share this with...

"Someone who not used to writing by hand. Someone who is being very careful to make sure this is read."

But wouldn't that person be some crank? They stuff a thick envelope full of other people's mail into my box, no name or return address. No name or return address! It's probably, I was thinking, some autobiography of a child molester, a mass murderer, but why did I get it?

I was sort of disappointed that it wasn't some Dargeresque pesudo-Max Ernst collage novel, pasted together from magazines to approximate the vivid delirium of some lonely psychotic. Just words.

I skimmed through the pages. There was an obvious 'cover letter', and a few phrases seemed to shew up repeatedly in the subsequent letters. "Dear Original" was the greeting to each letter. "Ran into Copy Such-and-such", "Had to cover up for Copy Such-and-such"... no actual "such-and-such"ing, that's me wildcarding the strange descriptives. Similar to the codes written below the date and page number, actually. (If I have time I'm going to make a key, translating the code to the person described by it.)

It wasn't easy to start at the beginning, the appeal of all these different letters made me almost want to toss them in the air and snatch random pages, make the act of deciphering the intent of the package that much harder. I suppose I really was disappointed by the variety of letter types: if it had truly been some psychotic spurting fantastical punishments and relationships with imagined people, he'd only have to convinced himself of their reality and there wouldn't be so much variation in the tone and timbre of the letters, the handwritings and so forth as I described earlier.

Well, it was an idle thought anyway, and it seems sad to be disappointed somebody wasn't suffering madness. Plus, whatever nutcase (in the milder, somewhat affectionate sense) actually did do this would still have to be sort of loopy anyway.

Oh, I should explain this: I've signed up for National Novel Writing Month, and have to write a fifty thousand word novel in November alone. I tried it last year, failed, but I figure this envelope should help me, inspiration or at least some cheating bootleg of the contents could do the trick. I'm going to retype as many of the letters as I can and add them to my word count. I figure it's strange enough stuff that I can pass it off as my own, and since I'm writing these sections at the "work meet-ups" I can pass the whole thing off as some unlikely conceit. Even admitting to it in the introduction! My friends will read this and say "I don't believe you" on account of how I didn't mention this envelope at all when I first got it, how I can't possibly be telling the truth since I am going to have to invent conversations with them in order to keep this from being a long sort of art-critical essay of some ranting madman's writing. But that's okay. I just have to get the word count! Anyway, it's more true than not true and that's all that really matters.

More true than not, but here's a conversation with A-- about this book that never actually happened:

--You're even claiming that your beard you grew is part of the book?

--Oh, it's better than that, I'm going to get progressively more flaky as the month progresses so that people start to wonder if the whole thing is actually true after all.

--How is that going to help you get the word count?

--Well, uh. It's more than just word count. It's an artistic program that engages all the senses at once!

--Because it stinks.

--You know, I finally heard a definition of an "artist" that I'm comfortable with. And it was in my Jung class.

--I'm going to step out of character and explain that Nick, who I'm talking to, has a huge problem with self-defined "capital-A artists", the sort of pretentious twits who go around making Statements with their Art. I do too but I'm rather more clever at my arguments against it and Nick's not comfortable putting those words in my mouth.

--Right. Our teacher said that the project of an artist is the mediation between inspiration and implementation. It wasn't quite those words exactly but it really made sense. Art is the activity that is reaching towards a goal that cannot be reached, in a sense. It's the expression of an idea. And that's not only a really good way to think about what an artist is, it's also one of the first definitions of art-itself that I'm comfortable with, since it includes a lot of craft and untraditional art forms.

--And found art? Outsider art?

--Yeah, we've talked before about the problems with that: is intent enough to make art out of an observation? I think this definition allows that, the inspiration-implementation tension is the "desire to create art from the observed". Found poetry is art because the inspiration is to make poetry out of some words that were not intended as poetry. The implementation is the unwillingness of those words to leave their previous life as functional or decorative objects and become poetry.

--That explains found art but what about the class issues with outsider and folk art?

--Functional art, tribal items and totemic fetishes, those aren't art any more, which is good. A fetish is equivalent to a screwdriver, it serves a purpose and although that purpose is representative, it is not concerned with the mediation between interpretation and implementation.

--And class? You seem to be avoiding that.

--I want outsider art to stay art. I know that there is a disgusting aspect of "taking advantage" with the labeling of private expression as "outsider art". I mentioned Darger earlier in expressing my desire for a collage work to be found in the envelope.

--Aren't you guilty by proxy, then, of taking someone's "pure expression", a functional creation, and claiming it for yourself, making your role the mediator of inspiration and implementation? Was Darger an artist, or are the people who put his work in galleries the artists?

--Darger is borderline. A psychotic makes art because they have to, in a sense, the critical aspect of the implementation is often suppressed. An "Artist" paints a painting and then relates the following paintings to that painting as a development. A psychotic views each work as both independant (commanded by the inspiration of the moment) and as entirely subsumed in the overall "command" of the psychotic expressive need.

--So the mediation there takes place across the artist's entire project. Each work is dealing with a single inspiration. Darger didn't have "multiple works", he had one large work that he continued adding aspects to.

--Right, and it's still art. The best thing about this is that the people who put him in galleries after he died, about the people putting Daniel Johnston in high-end recording studios, they're not artists at all because they're only recontextualizing the Artist's authentic mediation. Marketing the mediation is not a new mediation.

--So where are you, as the author of this book? You're not an artist because you're just reframing the letters that you found, assuming that they're real.

--This book isn't restricted to a brief contextualization of the package and then a retyping of the letters. Later on I plan to describe my search for the author in a sort of reverse-Pale-Fire commentary.

--But that's still the lame "outsider art" urge to claim some "helpless" person's art as your own by adding some frame story. Assuming this envelope is even real in the first place.

--So you're saying, taking a favoured book of the both of us, if Paul Auster were to reveal that the red notebook in "City of Glass" from the New York Trilogy was in fact a real notebook he had found, would that reduce the importance of the trilogy as a whole? The notebook, although ostensibly containing another person's work, fits into the greater whole as a support and extension of the ideas Auster is trying to express. I'm not allowed to be inspired by someone else's work?

--If you're inspired you're inspired and the mediation is between this inspiration and what you make from it. But implementation is not the same as typing up someone else's writing and saying that that that act is a sufficient act of creative genesis to justify calling it a new work of Art.

--You only say that because I've only written this much of it! I'll get more done and you'll come around. The mystery will thread its way into the labyrinth.

I'm in my comfortable chair, writing on my laptop. Thinking about that day two months ago about when I found that envelope. It's sitting on the footrest beside me, on top of a tie, and a couple books. Should probably start typing up the letters. The "cover letter" is in the same overly careful handwriting as the addressing on the envelope, and as the numbering of the pages. Thin thin lines. It has got to be a drafting pen, one of those evil-smelling expensive deals. The handwriting is really sparse as a result, the thin little lines look like they could fall right off the page if you didn't hold it perfectly flat, or like they'd ripple into curlicues if you put a magnet underneath. It's written without guides but with clean sharp margins, it must have been thought out very carefully before being committed to the page. No misspellings or mistakes. And such a strange opening:

Dear Myself,

I suspect that you are surprised to receive this in the mail. I suspect that you are surprised to read this letter. It is not particularly reasonable for you to be surprised to be reading it if you have already been surprised to receive it though. You do not remember writing this, as I do. I have practiced this letter many times. I hope that you read it and understand what is going on because I have only your best intentions in mind. Only your best intentions and I know you are probably reading this and already asking yourself how that could be how could some strange weirdo sending a letter to a stranger have any good intentions at all especially if he is claiming to be the very person who received the letter well maybe you should sit down but of course I know you already are.

I grew up in this city like you did of course because we both did and we have a lot of the same friends are you paying attention? I am telling you important things and they will not seem important until later because you do not understand why I am telling you these things. You will not understand until later why I am even talking to you in the first place because first I have to convince you that I am telling you the truth.

We grew up in this city together as close as one person can be. I attended all the same schools as you but we never really talked we weren't close like friends we were close like the two strands of protein that wind around each other in DNA we were the same and carried the same information and we are still the same but you are the opposite of me in a sense. In the same way that on DNA the amino acids but you are already aware of this anyway it is how the information is the same but opposite on the two strands. It is not the this way or the other way that matters in DNA so it does not matter that the information is opposites. What matters is how as you walk down the long curled strand the information moves from side to side. How much does it move. If you are only looking at how much it moves it does not matter which way it moves.

This is probably not helping to convince you that I am not a crazy person writing you a crazy person letter. And I am writing so carefully so that you will have no excuse to say later on that I had written a word sloppily so it can hardly be your fault that you didn't understand. It is very late at night right now but I am awake anyway because I have to finish putting this envelope together because very soon you are going to need to get this in the mail and I have to make sure that it is ready for you in time. It is very late at night and my eyes hurt and my fingers are aching inside the bones and I am dizzy and sore and would like to go to sleep but I don't think that would be a good idea.

There is a pretty good chance that if I fall asleep I will not wake up again which is why I am writing you this letter. And also if I fall asleep one of the copies might come in and find this letter and realize what I am trying to do and then you will never find out the truth about what has been going on.

At least you know why I did not put on a return address you would have been even less likely to consider this letter as a real artifact which is to say you would decide that someone is playing a ridiculous prank and even though you have a great love of the bizarre and the unfamiliar you would maybe be a little too scared if your own name were above the return address and the return address were your own and if I were writing less carefully you would recognize your own handwriting and it was already suspicious that there was no stamp so how did it get in the mailbox but at least that is a sort of standard "wow there is a mysterious object in my life now" sort of thing to happen. But people have this innate distrust of copies or I suppose since I haven't explained that yet I should say dopplegangers.

A copy of someone is a copy of someone. I can make copies of myself. So can you because you and I are the same person. I hope that you are not a copy of me though. The copies I made of myself have something very wrong with them and I cannot quite figure out what it is and I hope that you will be able to figure out what it is and that is why I am writing you this letter and sending you this package. I made copies of myself and made them go outside and do things and send me letters and bring me news and tell me about things because I hated going outside and I hated dealing with other people and I thought that it would be good to just stay inside and live vicariously through the lives of the copies. Because since they were copies of me I would in a sense actually be experiencing these things instead of just hearing stories about it. I get so sick of just hearing stories about things and it ended up that having these copies going out and doing things was no different from getting letters from people I know telling me about the delightful foods they have been eating or beautiful places they have been walking around in or the attractive people they have been fucking and I got sick of just sitting around and so I wanted to do something about it but the copies decided that I was probably wrong to want to go outside after all because they wanted to keep doing the things they did and I had made them pretty good copies after all. So I am inside here and hoping that when you get home and get this in the mail you will understand what is going on and you will help me go outside and enjoy life for a change if you know what I mean. Which you do. But you don't yet. But you will.

My head was swimming by that point when I first read the letter. It's got a rhythm to it, you know? If you're not paying attention to how ridiculous it is, it lulls you into a sort of quiet nodding of the head. It took me the rest of the day and well into the evening to finish reading the whole package. Sat at my kitchen table for a while, cooked dinner. Troubled sleep. It was really easy to tell it was just some twisted prank but still but still. Resonant thoughts, buzzing... I had a dream.

In the dream I am walking down Yonge Street. With a certain girl. It is somewhat cold out, winter is approaching as it is now, but it is dry whereas this early november day is wet. We are dressed lightly, anyway, walking down towards Eglinton Avenue. I'm wearing a suit, it is light material like linen, black with dark grey threads here and there. A white shirt and a dark green tie. Black shoes with leather soles and they are polished and reflecting the garish triply-gentrified Entertainment Complex lights back into my eyes crisply like the air burning on its way into my lungs. Tap tap tap down the street and beside me she's wearing her hair swept back by a shiny shiny metal clip on each side and the hair swings back behind her ears and forward. She has a white dress shirt on and a blue ankle-length skirt. I do not remember the shoes. Dressed like we are coming home from something or going somewhere. It's late though, the sky has that tired heavy swollen anxious for the dawn feeling. There are many taxis passing by but we do not want any of them.

At Yonge and Eglinton on the south-west corner there is a large glass atrium. If we were to go inside we would be headed towards the subway station, but we sit down outside facing north. We sit down and are not particularly cold because the winds that are common to that intersection are blowing somewhere else right then. She has a backpack with her, it's blue like her skirt, and they're probably both denim. Dark denim. The skirt has silver threads in it by the hem and the thread is embroidered into patterns like stars. There aren't many passers-by but some boy, some boy, late teens, nondescript, short hair and I Am Cool thick framed black plastic glasses. He walks towards us and stops and kneels down in front of her. He starts to unbutton her shirt and neither of us are surprised. In the dream it is like starting a conversation, like waving hello to someone you already know, or like telling a stranger you have the same shirt but it is at home. Or maybe more like smiling with flirty warmth at a stranger who is already sort of coming over to talk to you. Her shirt is now completely open and she isn't really sitting any more, her head and shoulders are still leaning against the wall but the rest of her body is laid out across the pavement. The boy parts the halves of her shirt and reveals a blue bra. Dark blue. The same shade of blue as the skirt and the bag but shinier, probably smoother to the touch, it has that fading shine as the curves curve away out of sight that smooth fabrics have.

The bra is constructed such that the cups are held vertically by a loop around the neck, running up from the top of one cup over the shoulder around the neck and back down to the top of the other cup. The horizontal fastening is similar, the side of one cup has a flat cord that runs around the back all the way around to the front again. So there are two cords in the back and they meet twice, and at the front, where they meet the second time, they are tied into a knot. The boy unties the knot. His fingers are cold and he has trouble untying the knot. She is staring at him. It is not an easy expression to read. It could be disdain, it could be anticipation. It is a very blank stare but her eyes are alert. The boy slides the cups of the bra, slides them up, exposing the nipples that fill with blood in the cold air. The boy's right hand has a thumb and a finger that measure the width of her left nipple. Observing the resistance and texture of the nipple.

She signals that he stop, she narrows her eyes, but it is clear that he should stop. It was not expected but it is not surprising. He removes his hand and he looks rather surprised with himself for having done what he did. She reaches into her bag and takes out a small notebook and her red-inked calligraphy pen. She writes a message in the notebook, upside down, but in completely clear script. Intended for the boy. The pen stains her fingers slightly with the red ink. "There is an object of extreme importance in my bag. Remove it and describe it to me."

The message is intended as a test of the boy to see if he should be allowed to continue. He spreads apart the top of her backpack and reaches into it. He pulls out a yo-yo. It is blue, in hourglass shape. A trick yo-yo, one of mine. It has my red thread I like to use on my yo-yos. I have her fingers in my mouth, I am getting the ink off of them. That part of the dream is true. He holds the yo-yo up.

--Is this it? This can't be it.

He is incredulous but she is inscrutable. Disdainful. The boy does not know if the disdain originates from his choice of object, his comment... he does not know anything at all. He puts it back in her bag, blushing furiously. He pulls out a drawing on a piece of letter-sized white paper. Normal mid-bright 20 pound laser printer paper. The paper is completely smooth. It was not in a binder or folder in the bag but it is creaseless and undented. There is a drawing on the paper, done with a fine black pen. Carefully. The drawing is of a female sheep-lady. Pointy sheep ears, covered in wool, humanoid body though, naked breasts, kneeling on the ground in front of a torso bearing a penis. The penis and torso are not wooly and look relatively normal. There is no shading. It is very cartoon-like. The sheep lady is looking up to where the face of the torso would be if we could see. She is about to put the penis in her mouth but she is clearly hesitating. In the background are three other humanoid sheep drawn in a Japanese cartoon style, with oversized heads. One is lustful, one is angry, one is worried. The three are just walking in through a door that is open.

The boy looks at the picture for a long time. He wants to figure it out. I know what he should have done. I know who drew the picture, so does she. It is not the object though. There is no object. The thing he should have done is refuse to look. He should have said that he was not going to look. He should have refused to play that game. There is no way to win that game. There was no object.

--She has been drinking, he said, a lot. She's drunk. She just met this guy and she is not sure if she wants to do it but she is going to figure she might as well. In the background are three of her friends from the same party, coming in to see what she is doing. They are looking forward to having more fun at the party.

Perhaps it's notable that he clearly forgot to include an explanation of the expressions the three other sheep-people had on their faces. But it doesn't matter. She grades his response.

--Yes, they're all drunk. They've been out partying -- drinking! -- and they're all drunk. They drink and they are all drunk because they drink when they party and so they are all drunk!

She grabs the drawing out of his hand and shoves it one-handed back into the bag. It is in that bag and it is still uncrumpled and unfolded and clean. The boy stands up, trying to be proud in his failure. His total failure. He stands up straight and walks off pretending to have never stopped in the first place. I move myself closer to her. She pulls her shirt halves closed and leans against me. She is still mostly on the pavement but her head is against my right side and I slide my hand between her and her skirt down her right side and gently hold on to her right outer thigh. The elastic of her underpants is going to leave a mark on my forearm. Her skin is cool. We are relaxed nicely together and she tilts her head back to look at me and she prepares herself to tell me something.

--Nacilbuper, she says. Tarcomed.

I woke up at that moment, on the floor in my kitchen. Naked, under the table. I sat up slowly, it was so hot, I was sweating and I felt like I had been rolled in flour while I had been asleep. Gritty and uncomfortable. The lights were off and it was dark except for the streetlight julienne of the blinds. And the blue glow of the oven, which was open, and at full blast. And the pages from inside the envelope laid out edge to edge to edge on the floor.

I'm trimming my beard. I am standing in my bathroom, and I have a beard trimmer in my hand, and it is plugged into the power outlet below the light above my medicine cabinet's mirror. The cable dangles in front of the mirror and I keep having to move one way or another to be able to see myself. It's the first time I've trimmed it. I have been growing it since I got that letter in the mail.

That can't be right. I got the letter while I was in school. I started growing my beard in the summer. But the reason I'm growing the beard is because of what the letter said. I need to think about the chronology some more, work out the dates better. I am pretty sure that when I went to Wisconsin last, in late August, I was already growing my beard. Maybe I was just growing it for kicks then, and once I got the envelope I started growing it for a reason.

It's pretty short now, and I've been soaking it every day with conditioner to keep it from feeling like pubic hair. I'm not sure if it's my style but you know, it's something to try. And I feel more comfortable knowing that I can grow a beard.

The little tough hairs from my face are clumping in the sink, and if I turn on the water they'll be swept down the drain. Buzzing from the trimmer. Also scissors, for the parts that the trimmer doesn't want to help with. I don't like the light in bathrooms. It's too white, everything is white and even if it's not cleaned often -- I am making no claims as to the cleanliness of my bathroom -- it's uncomfortable. It's bright, and I don't like bright light.

You don't see many people with beards these days. I can ride on the subway or the bus or the streetcar, or walk down the street, and it seems like only a few people have beards. Do they notice me the same way?

--Hello, Brother Beard.

--And hello, Brother Beard.

--I notice your face has hairs upon it.

--And I notice the same features upon yours.

--It has been a pleasure meeting you.

--I have enjoyed it as well. Fare well, with your beard.

--And you, with yours.

The letter continued:

I have the innate ability to create duplicates of myself. With modified attributes. They are not even in most cases recognizable as me. But there they are. Walking around. They buy coffee and wear hats in the cold. They put on shoes. Hold down jobs. I have made hundreds of them. They are all me. It is a strange power and I can understand that it is difficult to accept. The strangest power I have heard of before now is essentially the power to count very well. There are people who can count things very easily. They are usually sick in some way though. The powers people have come at a price which is often other abilities that most take for granted. For example the people who can count well often have extremely poor social skills. Or they have useless limbs. There are brilliant musicians who can only play with their feet. Carl Unthang played in Strauss's orchestra. He was born without arms. Mutatis mutandis. Consider Fedor Jeftichew whose stage name was Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy. He was exceedingly famous. Noted for his kindness and civility. Fluent in many languages. Perhaps the normal faculties in the cases of freaks are enhanced to make up for supposed losses. But it seems more likely to me that what we call freaks are simply farther out from the centroid of human experience.

It is a wide continuum. The word most relevant is "deviance". It is often used these days to represent a sort of differentness. Uncomfortable otherness. In mathematics is is used to describe being "not near the average". That is not a bad thing. If someone is very advanced in intelligence they are deviating from the norm. It is interesting that I have distracted myself this way. I am talking both about how my power is strange and how I am able to modify the attributes of my copies. I could turn them all out as freaks. Missing limbs or joined together. Small heads or hairy faces.

But in fact they are all naked of the face with normal heads and intact limbs and none of them are physically joined to each other.

They are all naked of the face because how else would they know that they are copies? It is a service to everyone. None of the copies I made can grow hair on their face. They are all male as you are and as I am. And post-pubescent. However I chose to ensure that the attribute of facial hair was suppressed in each and every one of them. The idea is that over time they will be forced to remember that they are not like other people and that they ultimately come not from a Parents but from a Duplicator.

I have not tried to create a female duplicate nor do I feel comfortable with the attempt. For similar reasons the copies are also all sterile. Functioning and so forth. But unable to conceive. This is appropriate. I am able to conceive, by myself. It is a ridiculous masculine fantasy I suppose. But I have no dynastic desires. I do not know if I myself am able to conceive. But with my power I am both able to conceive in a more limited but more direct sense. And I can ensure that my copies do not have the power.

This package which I have sent you is my journal. I have created many copies of myself and sent them out into the world and instructed them to write me letters telling me of their adventures. I crafted them carefully. Tuning their attributes so that I could use them as experimental vehicles. Sending them out into the world to try things out. That I am curious about. It is a science of sorts. The universe is very large. I am a space ship. Sending out probes. These probes are humans with specific controlled behaviours and physical aspects. They report back to me through the void. Specifically through the mail system. They write me letters.

It took me a while to get up the courage... I went door to door in my building asking the other tenants if they knew who had lived in my apartment before. My apartment is on the first floor of an old big rooming house that's been slowly converted into larger apartments. I'm right next to the front door, the first apartment in the place. Next door is a family starting out. A fairly young couple and a new baby. They're really nice to me, they say hello sweetly when we bump into each other. Sometimes when I'm going to class in the morning the little baby's being bundled into her stroller, and we play a happy game of making a baby laugh. I was walking to the subway a couple days ago and passed the father carrying her in his arms, and she stretched out her hand towards me and pointed and laughed and smiled and he seemed a bit embarrassed.

But I'm terrible at talking to people I don't know, especially if there's something I want from them. What right do I have to demand things from people? But I managed, I guess. It didn't go very well.

My plan was to just ask them about the different people who had lived in my apartment. Since I had moved in just a month or two beforehand, in mid summer right around when I started growing my beard, it would be a good way to meet people. I spend a lot of time sitting in my apartment, you see. I hear everyone walking back and forth from the door and their apartments going about their chores and all those daily social activities people seem to do. I'm just not very well-equipped to share in that sort of thing. I go to class, and I go to meetings of the various groups I'm involved in, and I see my friends occasionally, but I don't feel like I do these things regularly. And I probably spend about 18 hours a day on average inside my apartment. I like it there.

So maybe talking to the people around me would help me get out of my shell a bit more. I've been working on building up my confidence and this would be a good test of such. Maybe they'd have me over more, and I could have them over, and I could cook for them. Then I'd have a good excuse to keep my apartment more clean, too. And they seem nice. And diverse, lots of sorts of people living here.

But why not start with my immediate neighbours? Okay. I knew they were both home. I had heard them go out with the baby a few hours earlier, and then they came back and the little one was mewling a bit. Can't really hear it once they're back in their place, the sound-proofing's quite good even if the doors are thin, but I waited a while and then figured I could go safely knock on the door without disturbing them too much.

It took me a while to get up the courage... I had spent the day worrying about how to go about doing this. Should I wear my shoes? Should I have a tie on? Should I shower first? (I did shower first. I did not wear a tie, I wore a nice shirt though. I didn't wear my shoes, since I didn't know if their apartment was a shoes-off sort of place.) Probably the biggest sticking point was how to go about alerting them to my presence. If I rang the doorbell outside they'd think I didn't have my key, except that I wouldn't be wearing shoes, so I should knock on their door. Except that is so intimate, unnerving. I didn't know the layout of their apartment, but my bed is directly across from the door and it is sort of scary when one of the caretakers has a question for me and I have to put my pants on but I know they have a key...

But I settled on knocking on their door: I walked into the hallway and turned away from the front door. It was darker there, my apartment's cream and white and has huge windows, the hallway's dark red and brown and has small windows high on the walls. It has mirrors though. Most of the light comes from the mirrors which flattens the colours out and makes it difficult to see the edges of things. Low-contrast. I could sense my night-vision beginning to operate, graininess, and the few highlights spread more across my sight.

Stepped towards their door on the weather-proof carpet, felt my socks sink a bare half-centimetre down to the wood underneath. A smell of cooking vegetables increased as I got closer, dulling the wax and wood cleaner smell of the hallway. Their doorknob was cool. I realized I shouldn't try to just walk in, I had somehow forgotten my whole plan of knocking and my nervous prepared introduction. I had left the envelope in my apartment but that was on purpose. When I released my grip from the doorknob little marks from my fingertips condensed water onto them. The water evaporated off as I watched, little waning crescents. It was brighter than I had realized, or my night vision had adapted faster than I had thought, or I had been standing there longer than I had planned, because the lights reflecting off the doorknob were bright, bright, bright.

Dizzy. I sat down on the floor for a minute. I was starting to get a headache. As usual my left eye stopped working. Everything flattened out. There was an ache on the left side of my head and it felt as though my left eye had dried out and then been inflated, crusty chunks of it abrading against my socket. Head spinning. This happens every now and then. One reason for my agoraphobia. Don't really know when it's going to happen. Causes problems. Worried about going outside and so forth. Left side of body tingled. Not like a limb waking up from a pinched nerve. Like electrocution instead. Involuntary contractions of muscles. Uncomfortable.

But as always it passed quickly too. Soon enough I had regained my feet and before I even realized it I had knocked on the door. The husband opened it, and looked on me with a warm and friendly smile.

--Hello, neighbour! What can I do for you?

--I... I would...

I was still dazed somewhat from the headache but I quickly gathered myself.

--I was wondering if maybe I could just introduce myself. I haven't really gotten around to that yet, and I've already been living here for a couple months, so I thought it would be a neighbourly thing to do.

--Oh.

There was a bit of a pause. His smile left him for a moment, he seemed to be measuring me. I suppose whatever I had said wrong did not bother him much, though.

--Sounds like a good idea. Why don't you come in? We'll be eating dinner in a half hour or so but beforehand we'd love to have you introduce yourself.

--My thanks.

It took only one and a half steps for my foot to cross the threshold into their apartment.

Inside it was light colours, like mine. Larger, though. I had stepped into a large living room with a divider near the windows. To my right was a full kitchen, door and all. A window cut in the wall beside the door, so that one could stand in the kitchen and talk to people in the living room even if the door were closed. To the left was a closet, and a hallway. Doubtless down the hallway, at least one bedroom, and a bathroom. Probably two bedrooms, otherwise the bedroom could have just abutted the living room. A television was on, playing advertisements. A few low bookshelves, a few display stand sort of things with bric-a-brac. Some canvas chairs, a dark brown coffee table, and a red cloth sofa. I knew from walking by that side of the house that behind the partition was the family computer. In the kitchen there was water boiling and also a pan with some vegetables slowly hissing. The mother, the wife, she was sitting on the sofa holding the baby in her arms.

--Well hello, neighbour! What brings you here? Sorry about the mess but you know how it is with a baby in the house.

--Is that what it is! I must have quite a few babies in my apartment, then.

Pleasant laughter all around.

--Nick was thinking we could introduce ourselves a bit better, isn't that right?

--That sounds like a wonderful idea.

--Yes, I'm feeling uncharacteristically sociable today. Figured I should use it up on some people not accustomed to it. My regular companions are all rather too spoiled by me of late.

Pleasant laughter all around, although they weren't quite following me.

--Well, here, have a seat.

A cursory adjustment of a canvas chair, indicating I should choose that one to sit in. I did.

--Your apartment is really quite beautiful. I am jealous of the size, although I realize that is for the most part a cunning optical illusion caused by your clever placement of objects highlighting the available space.

Very subdued pleasant laughter, this time. I was alienating them. I have this problem sometimes. I actually do talk like that much of the time, and it gets worse the more nervous I am. Not so helpful, that!

--So, Nick, what do you do these days?

--I am a student, primarily. I've just begun my studies for the year and am excitedly progressing towards teacher's college, where I plan to train for the role of a grade-school educator.

--Oh, wonderful! You'll have to teach M-- once she is old enough!

--Perhaps you'd hire me as a tutor, then? Home-schooling is the best way, after all!

Pleasant laughter again. I was talking about their world now, their world of Baby, and Planning for the Future.

--So what occupies the both of you? Other than raising a beautiful child?

I cannot for the life of me remember their answers. I cannot remember their names, their professions, their hobbies. I have no patience for superfluous chit-chat. That is one of the main reasons I have trouble in this sort of situation, that I can't bear to hear this sort of drivel from people. It's tolerable from my friends because I actually know them, and care about them. And I suppose because it has some bearing on me, yes. I guess that is it. The only reason I can remember the name of their baby is because when I run into her with her parents, they coo and say "Look, M--, it's Nick!" and she gurgles sweetly.

Which is not to say I was uncomfortable. Once I am in the swing of things it is quite easy to get along with people. I suppose I should have said "I have no patience for remembering superfluous chit-chat". There are some people I am quite fond of and with whom I love to spend time, whose conversations with me amount to little more than a "how's the weather" and such. Eventually I managed to swing the focus to the other tenants, hoping to find some justification for my mailbox having received that strange envelope.

--Who else lives in this building, by the way? I've seen a few people around, like the Chinese lady around my age, or the grim smoker who lives upstairs and seems more shy than gruff despite his best efforts.

--Ha ha, oh that's (so-and-so), he is a really nice fellow but just does not like having new people around.

--And the Chinese lady is a student like yourself, but in post-graduate. Very sweet girl, you would probably get along well with her.

--If you weren't too gregarious.

--It is my only flaw. They both sound like good eggs, though. But say, my apartment had been for rent for a month or so, hadn't it? This is such an extraordinary building, and the location, you'd not expect a flat to go unrented so long.

--Well, the last person to live in that apartment is the lady upstairs from you directly, when you moved in in the early spring, she moved upstairs.

--Yes, she used to have parties in that place, but the sound never bothered us luckily enough. And they'd go all night, no less!

--Yeah, she had problems with her boyfriend, too. Bad problems, with police and the works.

--Oh! The poor lady. Okay. I should talk to her, then, though.

--Why is that?

--Oh, I got some strange letter in the mail. Not a bit of return address, quite mysterious, all that. Must have been intended for her. The letter claimed to have been sent by someone named...

But by the time I was even that far into the sentence they had managed to graciously manoeuver me into the hallway. Graciously but surely, and with not a little bit of grim anger swarming hostility under their cracking politeness.

--Have a good day, Nick.

--Yes, do take care of yourself.

And they closed the door in my face. I was left in the hall by myself, stunned. Half by wondering how they had got me up out of my seat, half by wondering why they were so adamantly uncomfortable discussing my strange letter. I resolved to go upstairs and interrogate the young lady previous tenant. As soon as possible. As soon as I spent a few days in my room recuperating from the shock of dealing with people I didn't know too well.

I should explain how I discovered I was capable of summoning this strange power. I am a naturally stressful person. Full of stress. I am excited easily. I worry about things. The summer was hot. Windows open and fans blowing. Blinds shut to keep hot sunlight out. Hot enough still. Hot enough still that touching the radiators you'd think they were running. Hot metal. Could cook an egg in several parts of the apartment. Usually the kitchen. Was not attending work. Depression and anxiety. Supporting myself was becoming difficult. I had friends then. They had concern for my health and mental acuity. Their concerns were outweighed by my own. They did not realize how bad it was. I was in a very poor state. Unhealthful. Dangerously incapable of taking care of myself. Not eating. I had food and it was spoiling. I'd skulk out of the apartment in the middle of the night.Not midnight. Three in the morning. Four in the morning. As you know there is a neighbourhood twenty-four hour supermarket. I would buy non-perishable food items. Cans of tomatoes. Avoiding talking to people. Bags of pre-washed lettuce. I never got around to eating those. The bags would get steamy and wet inside. I would pick them up and the lettuce would fall apart into clumpy fluid. Paying with debit cards. Not wanting to have to maybe touch people in order to give or receive change.

The problem of course with going out at that time of night is that there are crazy people. They talk to me. It is as if I attract them. Ha ha perhaps they see something in common with me. They come up to me. I can be fishing through the jugs of orange juice trying to find a kind without pulp. And they come up to me. Or I am looking for a bacon package that is not too fatty. And they come up to me. It happens to me in other places or anyway it did when I went to other places. In office supply stores I would be walking around minding my own business and people would come up to me asking for directions to particular forms or types of office supplies. Even in stores where the staff are required to wear uniforms. They would come up to me. Even normal people.

--Where can I find the cerlox strips?

--I don't work here! They are in aisle 3 near the far wall.

I suppose it is because I have a helpful and friendly demeanour. It is difficult for me to tell people to go away. It is difficult for me to properly project the antisocial aspect I would like to. Crazy people make me very uncomfortable. Perhaps more so than physical cripples. I feel cruel saying such a thing. But I am sure you understand. I do not hold it against them. They cannot go and grow new arms. Or cast off their superfluous chromosomes. Nevertheless there is some twinge in my lower gut. Perhaps my testicles climbing up their cabling back into my torso for fear of being somehow affected by the nearbyness of a freak. That is the physical disorder sensation I get. The sensation I attain around those who are mentally broken is somewhat different. It gives me both the sense of physical danger and also a sense of mental danger. Perhaps I will end up like them. I notice that when I talk to people who have strong accents that I after a few minutes begin to imitate them without meaning to. If I am around crazy people perhaps the same thing will happen. That would not be good.

I was out on a bad night. My brain was twisting and writhing in my skull. Sticky and wet. Slapping weakly against my temples. I could feel it wishing for claws. If it had claws it could rake my scalp and tear its way free. I keep my mouth shut a lot when I feel like that because my guts will heave up out of me.

Like I suggested I was crouched over the jugs of orange juice. I cannot stand commercial orange juice that has pulp. When they process the orange juice they filter out the pulp and boil the orange juice. Then they put the pulp back in. That is disgusting. Once that has happened the pulp no longer has any honest business with the juice. It is an interloper.

--You don't like pulp.

I wasn't really capable of making eye contact with this person.

--Not many people like pulp I can tell you don't like pulp Have you noticed that there is always very little pulp free orange juice available Perhaps you are not alone in your dislike of pulp

I was crouched over but rotated my head at the neck so that I could at least look at the legs and feet of this person. Not a good sign. Dirty sweat pants with holes. Old dirty running shoes clumsily tied with broken and repaired laces. These are good signs of a crazy person. Crazy people do not take good care of themselves. They are too busy being crazy.

--Frankly I am used to fresh squeezed juice. All of this processed juice makes my skin crawl one way or another.

--I understand your concern It is good to consume healthful items When you eat healthy food your body is happy

--I don't see any orange juice that doesn't have pulp.

--Over here Over here On this wall in the refridgerated section there is orange juice without pulp But instead of coming in jugs It is coming in wax paper containers Like what you buy milk in Do you ever wonder why milk does not come in jugs like orange juice does

--It does in some places. I remember in Wisconsin where I have family you can buy jugs of milk. Also you can buy jugs of root beer.

My patience was wearing thin. This person could not help me find jugs of orange juice. They were delaying my return to the apartment. I wanted to be back home. I wanted to be back home. I could feel the tension rising in my gut. I was on the edge of a panic attack. There was panic in my gut. I could feel it rising. My fists were clenching and unclenching. I was starting to sweat. I had to try very hard. To not lose my patience. I was angry. I was mostly angry at myself. I have only lost my "cool" once. In public I mean. I was walking down the street. I had had a bad day. No sleep either. I curled up in an alley and cried for a few hours. This is true. You recognize this. You have this happen too. You are doing so much better. You are healthier. But you know what it is like.

And now it was happening again. I had to not let it happen again. But the trying hard. But the striving. It makes it more difficult. I was beginning to melt. I felt the blood dripping out of my fingertips. Running out of my nose and ears. I couldn't breathe. The crazy person was shuffling feet side to side impatiently. Probably wanted to ask for money. Probably wanted to bite me. Get teeth embedded in my flesh. Shake head side to side. Tear me open. Get their saliva in the wound. Their saliva mixing with my blood. The chemicals and bacteria in their saliva mixing with my blood. My body with its stupid slurping pumping idiocy eagerly accepting the saliva. Running through my body. The saliva rubbing against the wall of tissue at the brain barrier. The bacteria slipping in. Infecting me. I would be sick like them. It is zombification. In horror movies zombie problems spread that way.

--You okay man You look kind of down Is there something wrong

--I'm... okay... please...

I started slumping to the ground. I wanted to lie down.

--Do you want some orange juice It's right here on the shelf Let me get you a carton of orange juice man You look in bad shape

--Would it be... possible... to get a rain cheque... on the orange... juice...

And I hit the ground. My right hand was scratching my head vigorously and already bloody. My left hand was clenching and unclenching. You can see why I don't like being around crazy people. I am vulnerable.

But another person walked towards us. I was expecting an employee of the grocery store.

--Stand up

and he grabbed me under the arms and lifted me to my feet.

--Come with me

and he grabbed my upper arm and dragged me away leaving my little basket of groceries and the crazy person.

--Man wait where are you going Don't go off with him You don't even know him What about your orange juice What about your groceries Man hey Hey man

We were outside before I knew it. My head was still spinning. I couldn't see out of my left eye. It felt like I was being electrocuted. This person was familiar. A friend? I hadn't talked to anyone in weeks. I thought I had managed to not keep anyone in my life. Familiar.

--Thank you. The fresh air is doing me good.

--Thank you. It was the least I could do. Hold still.

This stranger looked me in the eye. I dislike looking people in the eye. I saw my reflection in their pupil. He stepped towards me. It took one and a half steps and he was gone. He had walked right back into me.

Time had slid to the weekend before I was comfortable enough to try more experiments in identifying the author. It had really creeped me out, that encounter with my next door neighbours. Hadn't really managed to go outside again since then. Missed a couple classes, even. But you don't expect things like that. No-one expects to be bustled out of an apartment... I'm still upset about it I guess. Still dwelling. Maybe they just really wanted to get around to eating their dinner. Anyway. That weekend I figured I would talk to the pervious tenant. I'd reread the entire package a few times now. It was hard to keep track of, like sometimes there'd be a letter I didn't remember reading before, and other times I couldn't find one I wanted to reread. It seemed like an educative experiment. Someone had sent this to me as a puzzle. It wasn't meant to be factual, it was meant to be illustrative of some aspect of my life, or of theirs. They were helping me, or were asking for help. I could say it was rude of them to do it this way but it was certainly compelling.

I'd have to go upstairs. I've been upstairs only once, it was when I had just moved in. I was exploring around, just seeing what the traveling around spaces in the building were like. Up on the third floor people had mats outside their doors they kept their shoes on and little jars with dried flowers and name tags on the doors. The second floor had mats outside their doors that they kept their shoes on. The only thing left in the hall on the first floor was the stroller for the baby.

So I put on shoes. Going upstairs is a shoes sort of action. Going next door was not so much a shoes needing action. Plus wearing shoes would convey a seriousness that was perhaps lacking from my previous attempt. Should I wear a tie this time? No. The lady who lives upstairs had seen me previously on a weekend wearing a sport coat so I might as well wear one of those again. Demonstrating a seriousness and style exceeding the standard of weekend attire for most people, and all.

Again though I left the envelope behind. If it were handwriting she'd recognize it would cause awkwardness.

--Where did you get this?

--It was in my mailbox addressed to me...

--That was a mistake! This is clearly mine!

And so forth, maybe even ending up with the envelope being taken from me. But it was addressed to me, it was talking to me. So it was mine, absolutely. Couldn't risk it.

Walked upstairs. Knocked on the door. No answer. I had somehow forgotten to make sure that someone was home before trying this out. A mistake, indeed. I walked back downstairs. My door was open. I must have forgotten to lock it. But I was sure I had closed it. My door is difficult and wants careful fiddling to be closed properly, and I had a fresh memory in my mind of performing those fiddling acts before heading upstairs.

As my foot passed the threshold into my apartment the building alarms went off. The alarms go off when there is smoke or if the building power is cut off. The problem with the alarms is that it is several alarms pitched very close to each other but not quite at the same pitch. And terribly terrifically loud. So if you turn your head the vibrations change, interfering. It just cuts my balance out. I dropped like a hatchet through a wedding cake. Flat on my face. I had my contact lenses in which was good because I would have broken my glasses I hit so hard. My nose was sore and bleeding. Aching all over. The alarms turned off. I could see my bedside table and the clock on it, flashing 12:00. So the power had cut out and come back. The front door was opening, I could hear someone rattling keys around. I sat up as best I could, crouching on my threshold. The door opened. It was the upstairs tenant, whom I had wanted to talk to.

--Hey... Nick... are you okay?

--Sure! Yeah.

I stood up and closed my door. My apartment isn't as clean as it could be, and I'm embarrassed of it. Plus I wanted to talk to her. So.

--Hey so you live upstairs right?

--Yeah but... you're getting blood everywhere.

I wiped my face with my hand. She was right, I was bleeding profusely. The carpet was pooling, already. It was streaming, not dripping.

--I just wanted to ask you something, though. I was just going to knock on your door. Well I did knock on your door.

--Nick, do you need some paper towel?

--No, I'm fine, it doesn't hurt. I just tripped on the way into my apartment. I went and knocked on your door.

--I'm going to go upstairs. Why don't you talk to me later?

--I just wanted to ask you about something quick. It'll just take a moment.

--I... well, okay. What is it?

--I got this weird thing in the mail and I was just wondering about the history of the apartment, like who... I'm dizzy... man... maybe we should talk about this later.

--Okay, that's a good idea. Why don't you come up when you're feeling better, I'm staying in tonight.

--Thanks... thank you.

She walked upstairs and I was tired so I sat down. The blood was thick on my shirt. It had run fast enough that the shirt was wet and the blood wasn't soaking it any more. It was running down the shirt like vomit, clumping even. Chunks. Meaty chunks. This was horrible. I'm not one for nosebleeds, normally. I have friends who are susceptible for various reasons but even this was extreme compared to the worst of their horror stories. I closed my eyes. There wasn't any pain but I could feel the blood pumping out of my nose. It was not comfortable. Once I cut my finger badly and when I went to the hospital they injected some pain-blocking chemical into my finger. As they sewed it up, I could feel the thread pulling through my flesh but I couldn't feel pain. The sensation was so bizarre. This was similar.

No pain, just an observation. I was standing in the hall looking down at myself. I looked like a corpse. My skin was blanched and I looked wilted and boiled. Blood was everywhere. I stood watching myself for a few minutes, watching my fluids leak out onto the ground. I walked over to the neighbour's door. They were probably home, the stroller was there. I knocked on the door.

The wife answered the door. I could hear the baby inside, crying. She look confused, then looked past me, down the hall, to where I was lying against my door bleeding.

--Shit! Shit.

She called an ambulance. I rode in the ambulance beside my body. The ambulance operators didn't mind. They wheeled me away once we reached the hospital. I stood around for a while, then started walking home. It was a cool night. Autumn had started to flex and strut. I wasn't really dressed warmly enough. I thought about myself lying in the hospital, bleeding uncontrollably. What would happen to me? Would they give up? Would they try filling me up with new blood, blood from other people? I decided I didn't really care. It wasn't my problem any more. I walked home. It was night already. My door was still unlocked. My apartment seemed unfamiliar. The blood had been mostly cleaned up, except where it had seeped under the door onto the floor inside my apartment. I got some paper towels and some windex and I scrubbed for a while. I got it mostly up, but you can still see some places where there is a faint stain. If you come over, anyway.

I went upstairs. I was feeling confident, sort of. More distant. Not connected to the world. All that blood. Hopefully I'd just die in the hospital and then I wouldn't have to worry about that any more. I could just get on with my life. I knocked on her door. She answered it and she looked surprised. I smiled and and insinuated myself inside.

--So are you okay now? You looked really fucked up.

--I had a nosebleed. Went to the hospital. But I walked back, I'm fine now.

--That was a hell of a nosebleed, what happened?

--I fell, right on to my face. PAF!

--Paf?

--It is a good sound effect they use in french comics.

--Ha! Okay. How are you liking the apartment?

--It's really nice. I can see why you moved upstairs though.

--Yeah, it's got more space... I miss that kitchen though.

--Oh, it's so fun to cook in. I bet you have more privacy though, too. People are always smoking outside my window. Just because it's so conveniently located right outside the main door!

--Ha ha! I think I've done that a few times. Sorry about that. Hey, sit down. Can I get you a drink?

I have this suspicion that my upstairs neighbour is a prostitute. She keeps strange hours. I can hear her walking around all times of night, not that I'm complaining, she doesn't wake me up or anything. She has a wide variety of gentleman callers. And it wasn't the first time my neighbours had mentioned her boyfriends having law trouble. "Boyfriend's out of jail parties". Also she wears strange clothes and far too much makeup. But this day she was clean-faced and in casual clothes. Looking like a normal girl, sweet and kind. And inviting me to sit down.

--Soda pop?

--Ha ha, okay, how about a Coke?

--That is a soda pop that I will drink, yes!

From the kitchen she calls out over the sound of the open refrigerator:

--Ice?

--Yes please!

--So what was this about a strange envelope?

She walks back in with a tall opaque yellow plastic tumbler, filled with cola and ice. Sets it on a small table, on top of a "women's magazine". By that point I was sitting on an overstuffed chair. She sat on the footstool associated with the chair. Kind of too close. Her knees were almost touching mine. She had a beer in her hand, opened, and with a couple swigs already taken out of it.

--Oh, it was a week ago or so. I was coming home and found this weird envelope in the mailbox. I thought you might know something about it, since you were the last person in that apartment?

--Did it have a name?

--No, and it was addressed to me. It was just so weird, I thought maybe you'd... yeah I guess I didn't really think this through well enough. I guess... do you know anything about previous tenants?

--Well, I'd actually lived in that apartment for a couple years when I moved out in the spring. Got pretty used to it, too. I plan to stay here for a few years, as well. It's a wonderful neighbourhood.

--It really is a wonderful neighbourhood. I can understand moving upstairs. I just don't feel comfortable keeping my blinds open, you know? And I do love the sunlight coming in, it keeps me sane.

--Yeah. I feel the same way. This is a wonderful building. But what was in this letter? It was for you?

--I think so. It never came out and said it but it kept addressing me. I guess it would address whoever read it... I don't know. It just seemed really personal, like whoever wrote it meant for me to write it. I mean read it. I just can't figure out who it came from.

--Well you moved in right after I moved up here. Back in March.

She wasn't really interested in the conversation, it seemed like she was being polite but would like me to leave soon. It'd be fun to have some tale to tell of some ridiculous sexual adventure but not all of my chance encounters with the ladies end that way, I'm sorry to say. I'm pretty good at overestimating people's affection towards and interest in me, but this was one of those clear cut cases. She was sitting close because she was hoping I'd have something interesting to say. Raving about some letter from some crank that put the heebie-jeebies in me wasn't cutting it. I gulped down my drink, protecting my teeth from the ice by curling my lips over them and excused myself soon after.

It was a cold lousy bust. Something wasn't adding up, and I had to get to the bottom of it.

Instead of going back into my apartment after the failure talking to my upstairs neighbour, I walked outside. I checked my mail on the way out, the box was empty. It was dark out, I could see through the glass front door. I idly stuck my mail box key into another mailbox. And turned it. It opened. It was empty, no mail delivery on the weekend, but that was a surprise. I tried it on another box. And another. It seemed as though I had a skeleton key. Did everyone? I started to worry. Perhaps the envelope was not meant for me after all, maybe I should ask around and see if anyone recognized the handwriting. I felt pretty dizzy again. This was an unproductive behaviour. I closed up all the mailboxes and walked outside.

Down the walkway to the street. The hedges opened out and I was on the sidewalk. Streetlights of sodium glare glared garishly. A car pulled around the corner, and past me. I took a deep breath in. I let it slowly out through my nose. A cat pulled around the corner, and past me. I took a deep breath in. I let it slowly out through my nose. I turned left and walked around the corner, breathing deeply. My intention was to hypnotize myself. I walked in a very regular rhythm, breathing deeply, flooding my blood with oxygen. Out to Spadina, down to Bloor. I was walking South. Down Spadina. Walking past the university, walking past the strange buildings there. Down to Chinatown, then West away from the core of the city and out towards the hip bar and grill district. Or whatever it is, they're not night clubs but they're not restaurants per se. Lots of drinking goes on but there's no dancing. I wasn't intending to go in, and it was a weekend so there was a lot of foot traffic, but I wasn't worried, either. I looked busy and determined and I wasn't even noticing the people around me so I was feeling fairly comfortable.

I started walking up one of the small residential streets back to Bloor. I put my hands in my pants pockets, just to give them something to do. The fingers on my left hand bumped into something unfamiliar. My left pocket is generally my wallet pocket and sometimes also my small notebook pocket, but this time the fingers encountered something smooth and cold like a pebble. I stopped still on the sidewalk. No one was nearby and the street was free of cars in every way I could see. There were people blocks away walking along the main streets but I was in the middle of a quiet area.

I fished the thing out of my pocket and sat down on the curb under a streetlight. The yellow light made my skin look unhealthy. I rotated my wrist, causing my hand to face palm up, and opened the fingers. I had a snail shell in my palm. The size of the tip of my thumb, in two lobes, dark brown with yellow stripes chasing the whorl. Inside was white like pearl or shell of any sort. I could feel the grooves of the shell. My other hand moved over to touch the shell with some of its fingers. The shell was hard and cold and wet. I closed my eyes and touched it again and I could feel the water on the shell, it was water from a pond. The shell had come from a pond very recently, and I started to be able to smell the water from the pond.

I opened my eyes and the shell was still in my hand. I raised my hand to my face and placed the shell on my tongue which I had extended out of my mouth. As I stood and turned towards home, I bit down on the shell and felt it give way. It shattered in my mouth. My feet slapped against the pavement and the air rubbed against my skin and clothes as I walked home and I ground the shell to powder in my mouth. I could taste the water from the pond. I could taste the slime of the shell and the dirt and the traces of snail still secreted away in the centre of the maze. I ground it all down to nothing. I swallowed it as I went, and the last grain went down my throat as I reached my front door. I went into my apartment and into the bathroom, and I threw up into the toilet. Three times. Then four, after I thought it was done. Twice more, then, ten minutes later. Then once more ten minutes after that. All that came out was water, it looked like. Surely some of it was stomach acids, but there was no trace of the shell at all. I locked my door and turned off the lights and took off my clothes and got into bed and I slept.

That night I didn't have any dreams at all, but as I fell asleep I wondered if maybe everyone in my apartment had gotten a strange envelope around the same time that I did.

I woke up in the daylight. The sun was pissing down through the slats of my blinds into my eyes, heating my head up with disorienting radiation. I had developed, in my sleep, a head cold. I could feel, as I rolled onto my other side to get out of the light, the mucous settling in my sinuses. My eyes wanted to stay shut, and I was still tired. I thought to myself that I must have woken up because of the head cold making it difficult to breathe. I thought that people who are suffocated to death in their sleep probably wake up in the last few moments, that the struggle for air shocks them awake. So misportrayed in movies and such, though, where people can be strangled to death in seconds. I thought, I understand the need for dramatic tension and pacing, but wouldn't it be gruesome to have a movie where the whole ten or so minutes it takes to strangle someone successfully were actually shewn on film?

My doorbell rang. I woke up farther than I wanted to, I jerked awake at the sound. My first thought at hearing it was to try to ignore it and to go back to sleep, but it rang again. Sitting up caused my sinuses to start draining down out of my nose and a series of weak hacking coughs squirted up out of my throat. I was not expecting anyone, nor do I have particularly any friends who would drop by without warning. It could be Jehovah's Witnesses, it could be my landlord, it might be my parents, none of whom I particularly wanted to deal with when I had just woken up. I was struggling out from the bedclothes wrapped around me, fumbling towards my pants lying on the floor, when I froze, considering: perhaps the person ringing the doorbell is checking up on me, to see if I received their package in the mail. Perhaps the person ringing the doorbell sent me the package.

My body started moving again rather independently of my will, eager to meet this person. My mind was less sure, less certain. I was, frankly, tossed by terror and fretting deeply. Apprehensive and the like. What would they look like, and what would they want from me? Would they be pleased I had been asking around after them, or angry I had been investigating their origins? I considered how the letter continued:

Once I returned to my apartment so familiar to the both of us once I returned I thought about that stranger who had so curiously disappeared. I had no suspicions of my power at that point and considered only that my brain had finally betrayed me completely. Had finally lied so blatantly about my supposed sense-perceptions that I had no choice but to accept the so-called fact that I was doubtless not sane or at least certainly not constructing my perceived reality from the same essential materials as those who generate and conform to the consensus reality.

I sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands feeling exhausted and upset. If I slept would my brain slip so far out of control that on waking I would find myself no longer myself? It is still my belief that we are who we are because we choose to be who we are. If I were no longer able to make an informed decision about my nature and the nature of the things around me then I would lose an important or maybe even essential aspect of that choice. I suppose in that sense it is rude of me to greet you in the way I did at the beginning of this letter seeing as how you do not currently describe yourself as continuous with me.

And who was that person who were they and where did they go when they walked towards me and why did I feel them enter into me? Not "enter into me" in a sexual sense but in a still very fundamental and for a middle of the night sidewalk experience with someone I had just met inside a grocery store rather unnerving way. I considered their features and realized that they shared a great deal of physical resemblance with me. I am not used to seeing myself "in the flesh" after all and only see myself in mirrors and out of my own eyes down to those parts that protrude naturally into my sight so it is not too surprising that I did not recognize this person. Thinking more I realized that they were unnervingly similar to me.

Perhaps even a double or a duplicate or a twin but I have no twins. And then I realized thinking back that I had two memories of that time in the grocery store. I could remember from my point of view seeing this stranger and seeing them walking towards me. And I could remember from some other point of view seeing someone who looked much like myself curled up on the floor of the grocery store and then walking towards them and saying

--Stand up

and helping them up and then pulling on their arm and saying

--Come with me

and leading them outside and this person who looked so much like me was leaning against the wall of the parking lot and looking sick and dizzy and squinting and dirty and this person said

--Thank you. The fresh air is doing me good.

And I looked this person right in the eye and said

--Thank you. It was the least I could do. Hold still.

I felt a shiver as I remembered walking towards this person and stepping into them. Leaning towards them. There is a feeling one has at the edge of a cliff which is that the potential to fall is beckoning. This feeling was not dissimilar. But more along the lines of leaning into something that is solid. Lying on a solid concrete floor and sinking into it. As I fell into this person the separateness of the memories ended. Continuity undivided.

I sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands feeling confused and scared. I tried to walk back to the beginning of this divided consciousness. I knew I could trace myself back to the apartment in the memories that involved collapsing to the ground and being walked outside. But what was the origin of this other set of memories? I walked myself outside. I greeted myself. I walked towards myself. I saw myself lying on the floor as I turned the corner of the aisle. I...

There was nothing there. Just a sudden initiation into the world. A creation. I know now this as the moment of duplication. I sat on the edge of my bed wracking my mind to explain this to myself. I removed my hands from my face and turned my head to the side. My eyes turned with my head and focussed on my bookshelf. A book caught my eye and I walked over to it and removed it from the shelf. Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination". A technician named Jaunte is confronted by a fire in his laboratory which places the technician himself in mortal peril. The stress is extreme and he manages to will himself to a new location and to safety. The stress is extreme but with time the method is determined and trained and mere will can allow people to move great distances.

A gear tooth clicked into place and set the machinery of my mind working. Stress and panic attacks. But with training I can overcome that block and use this power for myself. As a lark I willed and strained. To duplicate again. It worked. I stood in front of myself. There I was.

--Hello. Good work.

--Yes. Can you do this too?

--Yes.

Then there were two standing there. We merged back together. I considered what to do.

It's really a terrible feeling, not knowing who's at the door. I mean, it could be anybody. It could be a psychotic with a bowie knife, or a friend delivering tearful confessions of hatred, or parents getting me committed. I don't have a ringer on my telephone at home for the same reason. And I screen all the calls coming in to my cell phone. I pulled on my pants and put on a t-shirt and went to check the door but no-one was there once I made it out. I checked to make sure I had my keys. I keep them in my right pocket, and I checked by pressing my hand against that pocket from the outside to feel their mass. I felt a right-sized lump and decided that wasn't sufficient. I pulled the keys out of my pocket, and they swung from my hand glinting in the sunlight. Shouldered open the door and stood in the entrance hallway next to the mailboxes. I checked my mail. Empty. The key could unlock other mailboxes... I left them alone. Walked out to the street in my bare feet. It must have rained during the night, or in the morning while I slept. The pavement was wet and slimy. There were dry patches on the street where parked cars had, after the rain, driven away.

The air smelled of tar and rain. I breathed deeply in a relaxing way, knowing that the smell of tar implied the presence of particles of tar in the air. I imagined the particles of tar, too small to see, curling through my lungs and brushing against the lumpy curves, too fat to be absorbed into my bloodstream. I went back inside. On my way back in I checked my mailbox again. There was a piece of paper inside. The piece of paper was very small, the size of a fortune cookie's fortune. It was blank on both sides except for a very small mark on the edge, as if someone had held a thick black marker to the thin rim of the paper. I put it back in the mailbox. It was entirely possible that the paper had been there all along and I had just not noticed it the first time I had checked.

I went back inside, fully awake now, and sat in my comfortable chair. The envelope was on the floor nearby. I am distracting myself from this because I don't want to think about how it all ends. No, wait, the doorbell rang. I went out to the front door, having dressed hurriedly. I was sitting in the chair later. I sat in the chair... I went to the door and found one of my friends standing there. A--. It was surprising to see her, she is sort of a recluse like me, and it's difficult to get her to visit me. When we're lying in our respective beds, having been lying there all day, talking on the phone, arguing each other out of bed, she always wins, and I go to her basement apartment to sit and watch television and talk about this and that. I guess most of the times she's actually made it to my place it's been sort of an accident or a surprise or a spur of the moment occurrence. She'll be lost on the way to some birthday party, stopping by to ask for directions, dropping by on a whim after a class.

--Hey hey hey hello!

--Hello there boy, what are you doing? Did I interrupt you?

She was referring to my habit of personal abuse. It's one of those topics that come up between old friends, tossed around playfully.

--Oh ha ha. Come in, and I have soda pop if you want. It is as usual really messy.

--I am coming in!

She was coming in, then, it was true. She sat on the edge of my bed tossing her coat on the floor. I couldn't complain, nor would I, since I had a good week of dirty clothes arrayed paces from my empty hamper. Not as many clothes as most people would go through, since my hermit habits don't require as much work on sartorial upkeep. I wandered into the kitchen, indicating my intention:

--Drink?

--Do you have a root beer?

--I fetch it.

Walked back carrying two cans of root beer, I sat next to her on the bed. The envelope was beside the chair, to my left, out of sight of us both.

--What have you been up to?

--Just sitting around. I was asleep when you rang the doorbell.

--I know! I peeked in the window, you looked like a big sleeping rat.

--Oh that is lovely. Was my hairless tail poking out?

--When did you go to sleep?

--I honestly don't know. It's been a rough few days.

--Looking forward to seeing Dr. E-- tomorrow, then? What are you going to tell him?

The doctor mentioned is my psychologist. We've been working on the dissociative problems and the social anxiety. A-- is supportive of these efforts, all my friends are, it's good.

--Well, the pills aren't working like they should for as long as they should. When I'm walking back from your place at 3 in the morning, I have to cover my right eye, because otherwise my left eye just shuts down completely. It's not enough to just close the right eye for some reason.

--You mentioned that, that's why I want you to take taxis.

--Taxis take away from my drug money! My booze dollars!

I don't drink, or do drugs. I was even caffeine free for a long time.

--Really though it's sort of scary. I know it's not like I have an addiction, it's not like I go into withdrawal, it's natural chemicals trying to rebalance themselves.

--I guess that explanation of the selective seretonin reuptake inhibitors doesn't really hold water then, maybe.

--That they're restarting the natural repair facilities? Yeah, then they should take as long to stop working as they do to start working. Anyway, it's not just that. The black pits are getting smaller but they're still there. Dr. E-- says they'll always be there, but it's still sort of horrible.

--Everyone has them, I think.

--That's what he says. It's controlling them and not letting them be the focus of the life you live. But it's also that I still have these powerful reactions to certain stimuli. I was talking to him about my phobias...

--You mean cute girls?

--Yeah, it's why I can stand being around you so easily. No. The whole smooth red plastic bowls thing.

It's bad enough that I have trouble even typing it right now.

--He says that these are "sense discretion" problems, or something like that. Problems breaking apart stimuli into discrete portions. He says he can't bear to have styrofoam touch his face at all. It's just like a short-circuit. But it's like my brain is full of them! And always starting them.

--But if it happens to everyone...

--I know, it blows my whole theory of my utter uniqueness and ultimate aloneness right out of the water!

--But my suffering is so unique! Why doesn't anyone understand?

--Yeah shut up that's it exactly. I dunno. The whole dissociative... that... He said it's like borderline schizophrenia.

--Bullshit.

--No, it'd be a huge dangerous massive change in my persona to be actually schizophrenic. I mean, I'd have to start having the voices appear outside of me, in the environment. But I have... I'm not the only source of thoughts. I can be sitting there and think out of the blue "I would like a sandwich" and sure I could come up with that on my own... but sometimes when I get that thought, it feels sticky and alien and I know it didn't come from... me.

--But it did come from you.

--Of course it came from me! It comes from me, always. But it doesn't feel that way, I've locked some part of me behind a door and it slips notes to me under the crack at the bottom of the door. Mailing me little... letters...

--What?

I didn't want to bring up the letter. All the things that had happened around it had been terrible and confusing and unpleasant so far. It was crushing me against some blank space, some blank empty space packed tight with fear or something, I just didn't know. I didn't know what it was in me that I was hiding from.

The letter didn't help. It was going to be a fun puzzle and it was just helping me slide farther away from Control. Dr. E-- talked a lot about Control, it was one of the "invariants" we determined from our conversations. The fear of thoughts that weren't mine were a fear of losing control. We had tried hypnosis a few times to see if that sort of "abdication" would lead to a greater control, but I reacted very badly. It reminded me too much of that flesh peeling sense of loss of self that came with my most extreme losses.

--It's just rough is all. Rough like tigers.

We sat for a time, drinking our root beers. She broke the silence:

--It's always rough.

I nodded, there was nothing I could add. What I wanted to do was give her a hug or something, but I couldn't really do that. She's one of the very few people I'm physically comfortable around. Touching people is an abdication of, I guess, selfishness? It is an opening up to be able to gain physical contact. It makes me nervous to be around people, no matter what. If I'm around people I don't know I'm nervous because I don't know what to expect from them among other things. I'm around people I do know it's because I want to curl up next to them and go to sleep. I broke my tension and the pause that had settled with some ridiculous joke. We laughed and talked about frivolous things from that point on. She left a half hour or so later.

I was too shy to ask for a hug, to ask to curl up and hold on to her. But as she left she smiled at me and held on to me for a minute. That made me nervous too, even though it was what I wanted, so I hugged her back and then pretended to shake her roughly. She knows, I think, that I am so scared all the time, and that was what was behind her smile as she stepped away, that she could see right past all that, to me, inside, back behind the meat and the bones and the brain cells, she could see right to the... whatever it is that was there then and is here now writing this. And she smiled because she liked what she saw. That's a nice way to think about it.

I sat back in the chair, this is how it happened. After she left, I sat back in the chair and commanded my hands to drive the fingers down to the envelope and manipulate the pages of the letters out onto my lap where I would draw out some text and read and see what I could learn from it. I found a set of papers that were alike, written very quickly, haste dripping across the page. Plain white paper, with some stationary brand logo watermarked in, and the writing was some marker, dark blue, thick letters. The marker seeped through to the back in places, the writing was only on one side, but that soaking was rare because of the speed the writer had employed. The letter read:

Dear Myself,

I am writing to you from a Southern region. I transported myself. You created me handsome and willful and I act on urges you cannot admit to yourself. Or that you admit, and tearfully confess, and hope to hide from in that way. Hiding from them in plain sight, or hiding them in plain sight. You created me and gave me wit and looks and a lack of fear. I am not scared of acting on these desires you choke on. So when you created me, tall and lean and fair of face, dressed in elegant but casual clothes, full of energy and impetus, I acted. I went. I stood beside you and knew that in my right pants pocket I had my keys which were for the most part identical to yours. But there was something else on the main ring, I walked outside and down the street to a car, and placed these something else, a car key, into the receptive slot. I turned the key to the side and the levers pull the lock out of the door and a small tab rose up on the other side of the window. I lifted the handle and the door rotated around its joint and I sat down into the car, lowering myself onto the leather. The key fit in the ignition and I closed the door and fastened the seat-belt and I started the car.

I know you have not heard from me since I left your side in the room, but you should know that it worked. I do not know whose car it was. I am still using it and I am not in trouble, so it seems to me that perhaps you also created the car when you created me. I hope that does not give you too many ideas. I dislike you. You sit in your room, doing nothing. You are a queen ant, spewing eggs, distended and faint with effort, but the ants you make are not drones. We are full of life that you will never understand.

I drove out onto the highway. I knew that in my wallet there was a driver's license that would be valid, and I wondered if in the glove compartment there would be a registration and insurance card that would match my name. Or would I have to explain that the car was borrowed from a friend? If it came up I would know what to do. I am glad you didn't tell me. I am glad you said nothing to me. I am glad you sat there, ashamed of me. I disgust you? Because I am willing to do what you are not? You disgust me because you pretend that it makes you better than me.

I drove across the border without incident. I approached my goal. I was driving, and I had a destination. I arrived, and got out of the car. I knew where I was and I walked down the sidewalk to the door and opened the door. I walked into the house and saw her there. I walked up to her and said Hello. She was stunned. She was speechless. Struck dumb. She looked perplexed. I walked closer to her. She was shocked still but decided that I was who I appeared to be.

--How did you get here?

--I drove. It's a long story, but I'm here.

She warmed soon, and we talked, and we were happy to see each other. We talked the day away, on this and that. I didn't care. I was anticipating the events yet to come. You are probably reading this and thinking that it is disgusting of me to be so disrespectful. Dear Myself, you are full of shit. The interaction between us was honest and real but it was also a very old game leading to an inevitable conclusion. She knew it. She knew that I had driven all the way down. She knew what that meant. The day grew old and fell dead behind the horizon. I was sitting next to her on a couch. Can you picture it? We were tired in the throat from talking, and I had my arm around her, and she leaned back against me. I decided to move my actions from imagination to implementation, and slid my hand down from her shoulder to curve around her side above her hip. I felt her stop breathing for a moment, then her body temperature raised slightly. She understood, clearly. These signals are there, you know. It is possible to tell. You are an idiot, a blind fool, a worm crawling through dirt who does not know the colour of the sky. I moved my hand up her side a bit and used that position to lever her down, she spread across my lap looking up at me. She bit her lip.

--Are you sure about this?

--I'm all fired up.

I had to betray the desire at least for a moment. If I were true to myself, she would be unnerved and recognize me as not being you, as not having your fears and hesitations. Laughing about something like this made me sick, but she had expectations I would have to meet.

--Hm.

--There is a fire, though. I am filled with it. I look down at you like this and I can feel it in you. Our bloods are mixing and we are only sitting on a couch.

I slid my hand under her shirt to hold her skin with my fingers. She arranged herself to be able to have an arm around me and to make it easier for me to lean down and kiss her. I kissed her with my lips, on her lips, and we passed several seconds that way.

--I don't know about this.

--When I talk to you, that is what I mean when I say that there is a fire.

As I explained, I ran my hands over her. I also removed some of her clothes.

--When I am near you, I feel it. It is there when I sit near you, when I feel you nearby, when you feel me nearby, when our legs bump when we sit next to each other at a table, when we laugh at the same time, when we are not near each other and think of each other in the same moment, when I do this, when I think about doing this, when I know, when you know, when I breathe on your skin and you feel the warmth of the blood inside me, when our lips meet, when we pull away and still taste each other, when we lie next to each other and talk at night, when I hold on to you and cry, when you call me and tell me a funny story, when you call me and cry, when you hold on to me and cry, when we want to hold on to each other but cannot because we are too far apart, when we want to hold on to each other but cannot because we cannot bear to, when we are with other people and don't remember this, when we are with other people and I am the only one who remembers this and I burn with jealousy, when we are with other people and you are the only one who remembers this and you look at me with a confused expression, when we remember at the same time and our eyes meet and it is too strong a feeling to have when other people around so we look away, when I am shy and teasing you and I poke you or tickle you, when you know that underneath that I mean something more important, when you are shy and scared and tell me to go away, when I know that underneath you wish you could tell me how to stay, when we are in a car and the monotonous hum of the road makes us dizzy and it is like we are falling asleep next to each other, when we are sitting outside on a bright summer day and the life of the universe is the drum in our veins, when we are sitting inside on a cold winter day and the heat of our civilization keeps us warm, when we keep each other warm, when we keep each other warm outside in the middle of the night mistaking clouds for the northern lights, when we keep each other warm while you are sitting outside having a cigarette, when we keep each other warm while you are waiting for your mother to come pick you up, when you travel to see me, when I travel to see you, when I hold one hand underneath you and with my other hand I trace a meridian down your torso, when I kiss you on the neck and do not move my head away afterwards, when you hold my arms near the shoulders because I am too far away to put your arms around, when we are staring into each others eyes and don't even realize it because of everything else that is happening, when our blood collects and warms us, when we prepare, when we share a brief sucking in of air, when we laugh shyly, when I think about you when I go to sleep at night, when I think about curling up behind you and putting my arms around you, when I place both my hands under you and we are on the floor now, when I place both my hands under you and raise you up to me and you let your arms lie above your head dangling down to the floor, when I bring my lips against yours roughly but then as I soften the contact I lower you back to the floor, when you then reach to my back and pull my shirt over my head, when you sit in your room and write me a letter, when I proudly put a postcard you sent me in the envelope I keep your mail in, when I think about you, when I think about you which is always, when you lean towards me and whisper in my ear that you suppose you think about me always too, when you admit that it is the case now but it wasn't always, when you admit by saying so that there was a great injustice in the world, when things are now so much closer to how they should be, when there is a sense of relaxing even as we are full of a new energy, when we are letting things happen as they happen, when it is like pouring out a glass of water, when it is like drinking from a glass of water, when we have been thirsty our whole lives, when a natural act that requires a conscious effort becomes a natural act that is inevitable, when a movement is like breathing, when it is like suddenly being able to breathe again after being strangled, when we are gasping uncontrollably but it is like being free from holding our breath, when we are like the gills of a fish reintroduced to water and the delicate mechanism is returned to the environment it is intended for, when we still remember what it is like to be alone, when we know that we are still alone, when we know that this is still not close enough, when we close our eyes and join together, when we know that this is as close as we can be, when we know this, when we know, when we are close and close, when we would share a single body if we could just to not have to be alone any more, when we pour ourselves into each other, when we trade each other back and forth and spill out onto the table, when we plunge our arms into each other up to the elbows and pull our hands back out and see the shine in the sunlight, when we glisten and shine, when we are pebbles in a stream, when we crawl like bugs on bark and we camouflage ourselves to each other, when we can no longer tell the difference between ourselves and each other and the world around us, when our skin stops acting as a barrier and starts acting as a transmitter, when we move between our bodies, when we spin and tumble and twirl, when we dive and splash, when we laugh together, when we...

--Stop talking.

I did as she said.

Closed my eyes for a while, sitting back in the chair holding the letter. It was like reading my own wishful thinking. I read it and felt deeply alone. I thought about what it was like to be alone, to be too scared to hold the people I cared about close to me. In some cases too scared to make them let me, it would work out well maybe... I had a feeling in my body that was uncomfortable. If you have stayed awake for days at a time you will recognize it. It is a feeling of electrocution. If you turn your head to one side or the other there is a moment where you feel a twinge run down your body. If you find just the right place to hold your head you can make that side of your body go completely numb. It isn't a pinching of nerves, it is an incompatibility of sensation. I felt that. I was being overwhelmed by the discrete universe swirling around me. I couldn't handle being surrounded by all these different things. I turned my head, hating the feeling, and looked at my bedside table. I couldn't see it. I could only see the slats of wood, and the screws, and the papers, each paper, each letter ironed onto the paper by the drum in the printer, the separately milled and moulded chunks of metal and plastic that I would have called my bedside lamp if I could see that much of it at once. Then the final blow came, as it always did, as it always does still, when I looked at myself. I saw fingers and hands and wrists and arms and legs and I didn't see myself. I couldn't hold on to that aspect, that unifying energy. The spaces between the names of everything was too wide and I slipped through the cracks. I couldn't tell the difference between the strip of skin on the back of my hand, and the sliver of wood on the floor next to my feet. I had no place in the universe. Everything was in pieces and isolated and terrible and unique and there was no room for me. I slid backwards. I fell away from the world. I wasn't there, there wasn't a me. When I close my eyes, the universe still exists, but I disappear. I couldn't feel anything in particular because I was too occupied feeling everything. There was no room left for thought or want, and there was no room for me. Eventually I unhooked from sense. There was a tunnel I could see down if I strained, and I could see the room that was organized around the lenses of my eyes, but I couldn't tell what was what in the chaos of touch and smell and taste. The other fountain was running.

I have to explain that analogy. People speak of a stream of consciousness. The idea is that there is some source, which I like to describe as a fountain. There is a fountain and from the fountain a stream of ideas flows. The act of consciousness, the verb of it, the process, is sitting beside the fountain and drinking from this fountain. We have thoughts come to our minds that are unbidden, these are the handfuls that never pass our lips. They are there, they come from the same fountain, but we do not entertain them. Some mouthfuls are not swallowed, some are spat out, these are thoughts we repress or decide are not appropriate. But it all stems from this same churning source, the electrical and chemical activity of the brain. Our mind is the cupping of the hands that nourishes the body.

Earlier I mentioned that there are foreign thoughts in my mind. They are not sufficiently explained by a single fountain. I already am aware of the source of my thoughts, I am a whole person, I can tell what is a thought I want to have, what is a thought that comes to me, what I am trying to not think about but flavours every gulp. You have to imagine though that every now and then I swallow something that is not water at all. There is some other fountain in my mind. I don't know how often it runs, or indeed if there is only one. I don't know what it is doing or if there are other hands and other mouths. I don't think there are other mouths. I am who I am, part of me is my body. I don't think there's room for two instantiations of consciousness in this body. I also don't see that in anyone else, I don't see anyone who is different people at different times, because after all we identify more strongly with consciousness; we identify more strongly with the water we drink than with the water we do not drink, even though they contain each other in their description.

But there is at least one other fountain in my mind. I can tell it is there. Sometimes the thoughts in my head are entirely flavoured with its strange taste. It is not a fountain of me. It belongs to someone else, in a sense. I am not saying that there are thoughts being put in my head by someone else, just that there are thoughts that do not originate from the same source as the thoughts that I consider to be my own.

These times when I am not in my body are times when my throat and lips and tongue and hands are conspiring to consume fluid from the other fountain. I cannot gain nourishment from it, my consciousness withers away. I don't really know what I do in these times, sometimes I return to find...

Once I found myself walking around in the kitchen, weeping, barefoot, with my kitchen knives arrayed across the floor. Once I found myself at dinner with my parents, in the middle of an anecdote which I comfortably continued even though I had no idea how I had arrived at the table. Once I found myself pulling out of my girlfriend at the time, she was crying and scared and asking me where I went. It makes me lose hope, really. I forget sometimes that this happens to me, and I think all is well. It makes the feeling when it happens again that much more terrifying.

It is a peculiar kind of loneliness. I understand what A-- meant when she said we are all alone. That the hole is there in all of us. But I am lonely even with myself. I look in the mirror and see this face with a beard and these tired sad lonely eyes and I don't recognize myself. I don't even trust the mirror. I fully expect the reflection to turn its back on me and walk away. I look at my skin and expect it to flay off and writhe away. If I can't even claim my body, how can I claim anything? How am I even alive in the first place if I can't even be who I am from moment to moment?

It is a frustrating position even just to think about. Experiencing it is both less frustrating, since I am not really capable of thought when it gets particularly bad, and more horrible, for the same reason. Sometimes I wish I could walk backwards out of myself, let that second fountain's fluids pump through the veins of the body it wishes it had.

It parches my throat. When I returned, this body was lying on my bed, clutching the pillows to my chest and moaning softly, sadly. It seemed appropriate so I continued. I wanted that envelope gone, I wished it had never shewn up. It reminded me too much of myself, and of how lonely I was. Whoever had written that was so lonely they had imagined populating the world with versions of himself. Probably hoping that this would allow them some form of connection to the people around him. But instead, these letters were all angry, all resentful. Always looking at their ostensible creator as a lazy horrible parasite. How could a creator be a parasite? Maybe God only exists if He is worshipped. It was sad. I wished for a happy end to the story of the envelope, that maybe whoever had written it had realized that these copies were angry because they were a bad solution. Maybe whoever wrote it got it out of their system, and moved on. Maybe whoever wrote it had realized that the real power they had was not the ability to make copies, but to integrate these copies back together. To cleave consciousness to experience. I thought about this, lying on my bed, and redoubled my half-hearted desire to find the author of the letters. I wanted to make sure that my theory was right, that some coexistence had been the result, some total to this divisive multiplication.

I still wanted the envelope gone, but I wanted to know that I could also not have to worry about the author. I could maybe find out that they had moved on, gotten better. I could find them and not tell them, secretly hunting them down and verifying their identity and then I could secretly destroy the envelope. Or maybe they would want it, as some talisman against reverting to that state. I think that this novel exists demonstrates that neither of those options are what ultimately came to pass, however.

I've been awake for a few days. I'm not trying to stay awake but I just can't seem to settle down enough to sleep. I'm distracting myself by tooling around on the internet, reading books, drawing comics, masturbating, brushing my teeth... it would be nice if I could summon the energy to go for a walk or to clean my apartment but that would be a constructive act. There are a pair of thresholds of activity that I'm concerned with: the lower threshold, below which I would be able to go to sleep; the higher threshold, above which I wouldn't be lying here in my bed angry at myself for not doing anything useful. I've been awake for a long time, I was waiting around before class started a few days ago, dizzy with sleep deprivation. Standing up is difficult because there's this urge to lean against things or rub against things. And you notice things wrong or things take on a greater significance. I was in the hallway very early, while it was still dark out. There had been some sort of assembly or celebration in the mail hall of the building and there were trays left out on tableclothed folding tables. A lectern with a scuffed school coat of arms was in front. All of the aluminum trays had sculpted handles and had wide flat plates of black plastic, and all but one were empty. The unempty one had 28 crackers, 17 of which were still arrayed on top of each other, stacked and then spread across the tray like a deck of cards "as you can see a perfectly normal deck".

A bowl was half full with some sweet-smelling pink fluid and a ladle and a few dozen thin slices of some variety of orange with the rind still on. I walked closer to my classroom. I noticed that in the ceiling there were little spaces between the white slats and I could see between them. If I had a flashlight who knows what I would have seen but occasionally there was a glimpse of cable, or some odd shapes resembling boxes wrapped in oil-paper and duct tape. I walked closer to the classroom and noticed that one of the concrete support columns was in two halves, with a ratty looking foam spacer between the two sides. There was a coat rack with those ugly cheap wire coat-hangers with paper wrapped around them, all of those with the paper still on them were advertising some cleaning service in red ink except for one that had a very 1980s style black ink illustration of a stylish couple in front of a palm-tree speckled ocean sunset. Or sunrise. But they were wearing sharp-lined clothes, very dry-cleaning. A strip was missing from the runner along the bottom of the wall, the blue plastic scuff guard. When they finally unlocked the classroom there were billows of chalk dust in wide fading stripes on the all-weather carpet. This is what I'm talking about. It's not as bad as the dissociative destruction of discretion, the splitting apart and atomizing, but it is similar. I'm learning over time that it's a continuum. We live and act on a strip of reasonable activity that is bordered on both sides by a gentle slope into incivility and anxiety, depression, horror, loss of empathy, insanity, degrading and improving gently and imperceptibly from moment to moment.

A-- said we're not alone. Or, I'm unique but in that I am no different from anyone else. Sanity isn't a quantifiable Q value, it's an aggregate. Where we all overlap, in the feelings and attitudes we share, that is "sanity". But we're all beyond sanity in every respect, we are all alien to each other fundamentally. Alone.

It is lonely in a classroom three hours before class starts, when it's still dark out and when you've been awake for days. I go through long stretches like this, and other times when I can sleep normally. It's a horrible and frustrating feeling to want so much to get some sleep that you cannot relax enough to sleep. But that's probably an explanation after the fact. Dr. E-- suggests that my loneliness, the existential despair and the pit of horror that I find myself succumbing to occasionally is universally shared, as I mentioned. And that the circulation of mythology in my mind, these strange stories I tell about myself (and the stories my brain tells me) are the result, not the origin. I did not become lonely from being strange and alien, we are all strange and alien beasts beset with loneliness as a result. Am I harping on this too much? It's an important thing for me. That envelope, whoever wrote that. All those letters inside. How horrible it must have been to think you've created some friends and similar creatures with a real ability to connect, to be with, to join to, and to be so hated and resented. Maybe the hate and resentment came first, like the loneliness, the self-hatred manifesting as a spectrum of responses. All after the fact. I suppose that makes sense, they had to go crazy before they could discover the extent of their madness.

One of the letters was written on crumpled paper, the backs of posters, torn off of telephone poles. The words were scraped clumsily onto the paper from stubs of pencils stolen from the lottery booths of convenience stores where everything but the cigarettes had a thick layer of dust.

dear myself,

i am writing to you but you understand that it is with great difficulty. i have difficulty holding on to words they slide out of my mouth and my ears like the mucous and slime that oozes from my skin. it is hard to concentrate. there is an ache in my hand from holding it still enough to direct the pencil accurately. i am compelled though. you create me in such a way. i am constrained in my actions by the nature of my being. i hobble down the street. drooling and bleeding. my eyes roll and twist. my nature is to disturb. you made a monster. i am a monster. you sat on the edge of your bed and willed me into existence out in the street. you did not even have the nerve to see me. i wave from side to side and that is as close as i can get to standing still. you sit in that room and imagine little adventures. i have little adventures that you imagine for me. is this what you wanted for me? i stumble and cramp and fall to the ground on abandoned sidewalks. i wake up with my face lined by gratings and with the thick city rain soaking me. damp leaves and rotting earth in the city parks. when i get up in the morning and see where i have slept behind a bush or against a tree. when i see where i have slept the grass has died or the earth has churned. i'm not welcome. i see people on the street. they stand far away from me and give me a wide berth. i am too grotesque. even the bravest soul cannot stand me. no kind words. no blanket draped around my shoulders. no good people holding their breath and handing me a sandwich. i eat from the gutter. i tear into garbage bags with the rats. the jagged shards of bone sticking out of my gums. my teeth grind into peels and rinds. i nourish on refuse. my breath stinks. when i breathe my gums sizzle. when i cough: knotted ropes are tossed out of my throat. my eyes roll and spasm. they see things arrayed around me. there is a brick in a brick wall. it is rectangular and has on four sides a coating of cement. the brick is red. the brick has a porous texture. the brick has marks of dirt on it. the brick has marks of salt on it. it is near the ground. there is a scuff on the brick from someone's shoe. i walk away from the brick. i turn around and find the brick and it is blurred into the wall. i see a traffic light. it has three globes attached to it. the globes are lit differently at different times. the globes have ripples etched into them. the ripples direct the light so that no matter where you stand the light seems to focus towards you. the traffic light hangs steadily. there is a wind sometimes and the traffic light sways slightly. there is a wind sometimes and an empty bag from a grocery store scrapes along the pavement and then lifts up into the air and throws itself in front of a car. there is an apple core. there is another plastic bag stuck in a tree. there is an old lady sweeping ants into the street. there is a bench in a park with someone's name on a plaque. the bench looks across the park. underneath the bench is a dead squirrel. in the park there is a raised circle of dirt. the employees of the city come along routinely and place plants in that circle. it is empty at the moment. none of the trees in the park have grass at the base of their trunks. there are marks in the dirt at the base of the trees where sneakers and backpacks have been. my face itches. i rub my face on the bark of a tree and something snags. i wait a few minutes. the tree holds on to me. i fumble with my fingers and life my head up and i am unhooked. it is night but the streetlights make the tree bark shine where i rubbed my face. this is a strange world of beautiful moments. it is a struggle to not collapse when struck by the beauty of the things i see. compared to me, the putrid scrape on a curb where someone cleaned their shoe after stepping in the product of a dog, compared to me that is as beautiful as seeing a star through a hole in the clouds when the city lights are so bright the moon seems to be fading out of the sky. when the skins over my eyes cloud my sight the street lights stretch out. it seems to always be night time. i know that i sleep but i do not have dreams. i remember my earlier life. i remember being a student and having friends and staying in my apartment all the time. you sat on the edge of your bed and cleared your throat. you sucked all the sickness you could find in your lungs up into your mouth. you spat me out. did it work? are you sitting on the edge of your bed? with clear throat? or did you find out. when you are sick your body makes fluids. mucous is manufactured. it is not the sickness. the sickness is close to you and deeper inside. sickness lives inside you. a thick head and a deep cold are your body helping you. you can spit and spit and spit but it will still build up until you are better. you do not get better by hiding from the sickness. i am not made of anything useful. are you extracting? trying to purify? you cannot cut it out of you. if you want to not have a face you cannot correct that by skinning your skull. you will have had a face. you will be defined by once having had a face. you cannot wish to have never had something. it does not work. there is a wax paper cup with a plastic lid and a yellow straw on the newspaper box next to the newspaper box i am writing on. it had a soft drink inside. and ice. melted now. it was discarded much earlier in the day. the restaurant of origin is a few blocks away. people are walking by me. they were laughing and having fun. they are drunk. they were laughing at things as they walked by. they were preparing to make fun of me. hunched over the newspaper box. but as they got closer i turned their stomachs. their fun is gone. they have sobered. they will part ways soon. they will not remember me until the next time they are together. they will avoid each other more and more. they do not want to see me again. they associate me with each other. i can see this in the way they are walking away from me. much quieter. i wish i could apologize or that i could have not had this effect. people live their lives in clean corridors that stretch from birth to death. they open doors in the corridors and greet each other through the doorways. there is a door at the beginning of the corridor and at the end. there are drains in the floor. i bubble up through the drains and stain the floors of the corridors. i pool and drip and steam. people stumble walking past me. they will think back to that clogged drain for the rest of their lives. trying to find a place to clean their shoes. knowing that if they turn around they will see they've been tracking footprints since they passed the clogged drain. they do not greet me through a doorway. i am a complication and aberration. but life is difficult. a struggle. you cannot pretend otherwise. you cannot hold your breath when there is a bad smell coming from your skin. you will become dizzy after a time. i look at your life. i can remember it. you think this is the life you lead. a contagion. sickness spreading through social contact. causing those around you to suffer needlessly. you know nothing. you are wrong. you identify with me incorrectly. i have never been a part of you. you clear your throat and spit me out. but no. we have nothing in common. the dead squirrel shook gently. it had life writhing inside it. real life. i am not even a maggot. i am not even a worm. you could have made me a real person. you could have given me hungers and desires. needs. instead i exist to dismay people. i exist to free you of responsibility. scuffling. it is a nice life in a sense. i am wracked with pain. sick in every pore. but i see beauty. everything is beauty. except you. i think of you. sitting on your bed. lying on your bed. checking your mail. you are a cancer. you think of me as a cancer. you think you have excised me. you think you can wall me off. you think that you can pretend i am not part of you. you think all these things and i know you think them. we have shared so much. would you trade places with me? would you dare to live this life? you flatter yourself. you read this and think you already have lived this life. you think you lived this life and you created me to free yourself of it. you think that your life was a blight. that you poisoned the people around you. that there were sick thoughts in your head. and you had to cut them out of you to be kind to those around you. you think that you can hide from the truth. the truth is that i am the same as you. but you can hide in your clean skin and smooth gaze outwards. i catch glimpses of myself in windows of closed for the night stores and parked for the night cars. it turns my stomach. you think you are this twisted and sick on the inside. you think you can turn and walk away from it. you think you can free yourself of the darkest thick chunks of your meaty soul. i am standing outside. i can see your light is on. i can hear you typing. you have a light on beside your bed. you are lying in bed. i can go up to the window. you hear me? you hear me outside? the compression of grass and dirt. the shamble. the drag. the step. i lean against the wall. my head is at the window. if you looked you would see a dark shape. the curves would suggest a human face. mostly. my bloody pus clouded eyes reflecting your night table light back. you would see if you only looked. and you would see yourself. you can pretend that i am no longer part of you. but then why are you scared to look? why are you scared to look? are you worried you will join back up with me? or are you scared that you will join back up with me, that we will join back together, and you will find that nothing is different? i can tell you right now: nothing will be different. you made me wrong i suppose. i see beauty everywhere. how can a monster find beauty? how could you make a monster that can find beauty? you would be happier if you could recognize that i am as much not you as you are not me. but you don't want to know and i am the happier for it. you should suffer. you should have your skin peel off and your muscles flay themselves. you should have your teeth rot out of your head and your eyes cloud with mucous. you should have your sinuses fill with blood and your ears clot with scabs. you should have your nose weld shut with snot and your legs drip with piss and shit. you should have your guts churn and boil and spew acid up into your mouth so that channels are carved in your tongue. you should have your hair matt and become lairs for bugs. you should have your pores clog and run and weep. sores opening across your body. festering lumps where you used to have toes. you should live in this body. you would not find beauty you would only find the same self-absorption you have already. you would hardly notice a difference except to say that you finally have the body you deserve. you disgust me.

I had a dream last night that my teeth became loose. My tongue was exploring and noticed that the very back teeth had a bit of give. Then more, and then they came out into my mouth. Eventually all my teeth fell out, except for the two in the very front, on the top. None of my bottom teeth fell out. I walked around with them in my hand, the teeth that fell out, they were covered in spit and glistening wet, and so much smaller than I expected. They were the size of breath mints, small ones, curved and pointed like teeth are but in miniature. I could hold them all in one hand in the very bottom of the cup of my palm. They had a light in them, and lit my way somewhere. I am dizzy and am having trouble concentrating. It is like the feeling of being drunk, my movements are clumsy and fuzzy. But when I'm drunk I have a confidence, a "drunken luck", always falling off my barstool into a comfortable chair, spilling my glass into another glass that needed refreshing. I don't even really notice how clumsy I'm being as a result. This isn't like that. I'm sort of underwater. I have been sleeping for the past twenty something hours and now I'm walking around outside trying to do something. I had a plan when I left the apartment, there was something I was going to do, but I wandered too far or I lost track of my idea, and now I'm lost, and I don't know why I went outside, and it is starting to rain. I am not often lost, I know my way around this city well. I'm walking on some well-treed residential avenue, and those are plentiful and anonymous enough, but I don't really remember what path I was talking that ended me up here. I'll sit down. I'm sitting on the curb. I close my eyes. The rain is not strong, it is just occasional drops here and there. I can smell the dirt of the pavement as it moistens. And the cars beside me, their oils and metals curling off and twisting into the grooves carved in my skull. The air is wet and heavy and fogged. I am wearing one of my sport coats, the brown tweed one. I wear it all the time but somehow leaving it on the floor in my apartment has made it neglected. I put it on, I do remember this, I put it on over a tshirt, and I noticed the remains of a spider's egg pouch stuck to the inside below the pocket. I peeled it off, but there is still when I look at it a little circle of spider silk stuck to the fabric there.

A deep breath, in through the nose, hold it. Filling my lungs up. Dr. E-- suggests deep breaths as a way to relax and to not let myself panic. I feel like I might panic. I don't know where I am but that's not so much the problem. Just feeling like I'm sitting on the edge of something. The curb I guess.

I am wearing the brown sport coat. My right hand directs itself into the breast pocket of the sport coat. There is a small folded up piece of paper in the pocket. I don't recognize it by touch. I pull it out and it is a lined piece of paper from one of my pocket notebooks. The cheap sort you can buy at any convenience store. It's been torn out. Also folded up. It is still unfamiliar. I unfold it. It says:

I give up.

I can't figure it out, and I never will.

I remember what it is from. Some summer night, not too long ago. Got in an argument with E-- and she left the bed and got in her car and drove off. It was a bad argument. I was an asshole. She was right to leave. I was not right to say what I said. I don't even particularly remember what it was I said. But I told her to leave. And she took me seriously. And I sat there, feeling lost. I didn't know how I got there. Beside someone I love and saying these poisonous things. Sick things. Things to make her hate me. And she got up and left and drove off in her car. I was dizzy and sick feeling. I took everything out of my pants pockets. I had my wallet and some change and some papers and my keys and one of my little cheap notebooks. I took all these things out of my pants pockets and put them into my bag which was beside the bed. The bed was a couple mattresses on the floor of the living room of her family's house. I was visiting. I put my things in my bag. I took my cheap notebook and wrote the note down on one of the sheets, detached it from the notebook, and put the notebook in the bag with the rest of my things.

I stood up and put on my clothes and then I put on my shoes and I opened the front door and I walked outside. It was hot and humid and hard to breathe outside. It was humid like a bathroom during a shower. Hard to breathe. I walked outside. I didn't know what to do. I thought maybe she hadn't driven too far away and I could figure out where she had driven to. I knew she worked in the morning and maybe I could walk to where she worked and she would be parked there. I decided to just start walking anyway. I knew what I was going to do. I had that note in my pocket and no identification on me. I had a plan. There were train tracks nearby, and there were rivers nearby with rocks in them, and there were all sorts of things in every direction. I just had to make one last decision, really. I walked for hours. I think it was hours. I had no way to tell time. I walked and walked with the air sticking to my lungs. I was so tired. And I felt so lonely. I knew that I had ruined everything. She had left me. This is someone I thought I would always have nearby. And I had said such horrible things.

I walked down a street. There weren't many street lights and there wasn't any sidewalk. The few streetlights lit the trees around them. It was like walking from forest fire to forest fire. I felt like some strange radiation, passing through the earth without causing any reactions. I was the sort of thing people built huge detection laboratories for. People would spend billions of dollars trying to decide if I actually existed or not. I could pass through any life without making a mark. I wished that were true. I wished I could go back and avoid all these things, I wanted to erase myself. I wanted to stop affecting the people around me.

I wasn't even sure what I said any more. I'm still not. I know I told her to leave. But I don't remember why. I can guess though. I probably wanted to do something inappropriate. I am always wanting to do something inappropriate. I don't understand the sorts of boundaries people make around themselves. I get resentful that they don't understand my boundaries. That I make these boundaries and have spent my whole life fighting against them. That my boundaries seem so permanent and so horrible and so huge. So when I can move past them for even a moment I expect the world to be aligned appropriately. So I do things that I wish I could do all the time. I spend all my time alone. Always alone. I was walking down a street and I came to some train tracks. And a station. I looked at the schedule. I didn't know what time it was but it couldn't be long now that a train would come by. I could walk down the tracks. I would meet a train. But maybe then my note wouldn't be legible. Maybe I should go to the river nearby. Near the pizza place. I could walk back there.

I walked to the river near the pizza place and sat next to the river. I sat on a rock and I looked at the river and I thought about what I would have to do to end up in the river. Maybe the note would be illegible. I thought about why I had decided what I had decided earlier. Why did I think I should give up? Because E-- had been so upset that she had left. I was being horrible to her. It was right for her to leave. I wanted to keep that from happening again. I hated myself so much. I wanted to make sure I would never be able to hurt someone again. Or at least never know it. And so I was sitting by the river thinking about how I would be able to keep from ever knowing anything again.

I can't figure it out, and I never will.

The note was talking about Other People. I couldn't figure out how other people worked. I couldn't figure out how they felt about things. How to not make them hurt. How to not hurt them. I couldn't figure out how to not make them hurt. I took my pen and I wrote onto a piece of paper from one of my cheap notebooks "and I never will." I knew that I would never learn. Because this wasn't the first time. E-- visited me once and she slept on the couch for the last few nights. Also there was a time in Chicago and she slept on the couch there and I didn't even remember that. I thought that the time in Chicago was some sort of time I had reached out of myself and found someone nearby. It is so hard to reach out of myself. It takes everything I have. And I get so upset when it doesn't work. It makes me feel like giving up.

I thought about all this sitting on the curb in the rain. Looking at this piece of paper. Eventually I had walked back to the house, and I went to sleep in the bed on the floor. That day E-- and I got along fine. The next night she lay in bed next to me and I kissed her on the cheek and on the forehead. And she smiled. It was a daring and bold thing to do. I could hardly believe I had done it. And she didn't get up and go to her car and drive away. But I also did not try to hold her close to me. But I kissed her on her cheek and on her forehead and that is something I never expected myself to be able to do. I sat on the curb in the rain thinking about the look on her face when I had done that. I remember that she watched me get closer. I wonder what she was expecting. She smiled afterwards. She smiled and I think it meant that she was not angry at me for doing that. But I can't really tell. It's impossible for me to see past a smile.

I see a smile and my mind is lost in it. Maybe underneath it, if I knew better, I could see in her eyes, in a tension in her eyes, or in the curve of her eyebrows, I could see that she was also saying I shouldn't ever do that again, or maybe instead she was saying I should do that again right away. I have no idea. I can't figure it out, and sometimes I think I never will.

I folded the note up and put it back in the breast pocket of my jacket. The rain was still meagre. I thought about the note and if I would ever need it. I forgot about it. I wondered if there were other notes like that in other pockets of other clothes of mine. Or in bags. Or tucked into books. Hidden behind things on my shelves. Folded up and stuffed into cases of things. How many times have I felt that way? How many times have I wanted to stop trying, to stop trying because I was so sick of failing? It is impossible to connect to someone. It is impossible to not be alone. There is a space between me and everyone else. It is a space I cannot cross alone, but no one tries to cross it to meet me. Maybe no one can. Maybe no one can with anyone. I can't figure it out. If everyone is alone like I am why is anyone still here? Why does anyone try? I do not think I will ever be able to connect to someone else, I do not think that I will ever not be alone.

It seems impossible. To connect to someone. I walked down the street in the rain and felt the rain drops hit my hands as I walked. I felt them hit my face and I saw them darkening the sidewalk. I was reaching a busier street. A street with commercial fronts. Maybe I would recognize it or the name of it. But when I got to the street I couldn't read the signs. I couldn't read any of the signs and my left eye started to go dim. I was tired. I mean I am tired. I am not sure between what I was feeling then and what I am feeling now. I walked in some direction on the street. The busier street. There was a car, and another car, and on the other side of the sidewalk there was a paper plate resting against the bricks of some store. I couldn't read what the store was but inside there were pieces of meat lined up and some pieces of meat hanging from hooks and tubes of meat in casings behind a glass counter so I suppose it was a butcher. It was dark out and raining slightly but I saw other people on the street.

I was feeling like it was good I had that note with me. I still feel like giving up all the time. I mean I did then. I would want to give up. There is a bottle in my bathroom, from the time my wisdom teeth were taken out. A prescription of 325 milligram percocet tablets. There are seven left. I could take all seven. Then I could lie in the bathtub and hold my small utility knife in my right hand and press down with the blade edge onto my left arm and draw a line with the knife from the wrist down the arm to the inside of the elbow. Probably again. And maybe once more. And the percocet would be dulling the pain. And I would have remembered to unlock the door of my apartment so that when people had to come and clean up they would not have to wait for the landlord and all of that. And I think maybe that my mind was made up already because earlier today, while I was writing this, I sent an email to some of my friends. It said "that there is a common element amongst the people I love and care about. They are are struggling and lonely and sad and unhappy. And they all know me. It seems obvious." I still want to give up and I signed the email "jumping to conclusions" but I am talking about this time I was walking around outside. And it was raining and it was night time and I had a note in my pocket that I wrote earlier. And there were people walking by. I interrogated them in my mind. I thought about that horrible envelope. The envelope that was sitting in my apartment. I thought about who had written it. I didn't know. Did someone know? Did the people walking past me know? Maybe they wrote it. I looked at them. I interrogated them in my mind. I looked at them and asked them questions and I stared at them and I was brave but I said nothing to them. I scratched my beard and pulled my beard and looked them in the eye which is pretty brave for me.

A young man walked by. He was wearing white pants and black running shoes. The running shoes had white piping on them and a logo but I don't remember the logo. The pants were low over the shoes so I do not know what sort of socks he was wearing. He had a black leather belt on his white pants. He had a white shirt on with a curved collar. It was a tshirt. Over the tshirt he had a dark blue jacket. The jacket was a synthetic shiny fabric. Hair poked up over the tshirt and hair poked out from the ends of the arms of the jacket. His hands were idle. There were things in the pockets of the jacket. Probably a cell phone. Probably a case of cigarettes and probably a lighter. He was caucasian. He had a round face and sunken eyes and dark hair that was made to stand upright by some hair product. It shone in the light of the empty closed stores and the streetlights and the passing cars. He had thick eyebrows that trailed together in fine hairs. His lips pursed out and his nostrils flared with each breath. I thought about him being the person who wrote me the letter. Did he have what it took? Could he split himself off into other people? I stared at him and rolled my eyes and stuck out my tongue and pointed and groaned and stamped my feet and he looked at me and quickly looked away when he saw me making eye contact. I looked at his cheeks. They had a dull texture. He probably shaved. Could he be the origin point? He was scared of me I think. I dove towards him and he made a yalp. I decided he was not the person who wrote me a letter. He was not the sort of person to write me a letter. But someone else came down the street.

A middle aged woman walked by. She was wearing a long black wool skirt and she had a denim jacket and she was wearing a tshirt that was dark blue and it had some sort of message about a charitable organization. She had an umbrella with her that was closed and that she carried in her hand on the same side as her purse rested. Her purse was knit and open on the top and she was walking towards me and her shoes were running shoes. She had a severe short haircut and a wide forehead and high strong cheekbones but a weak chin. Her ears stuck out. Did she have what it took? Could she split herself off into other people? But then I remembered that the person who wrote me the letter was male. And I stared at her but did not interrogate her. She gave me a strange look as she walked by me, sizing me up I think. Thinking to herself "I could take him". She was right, but maybe only because I didn't care to win a fight. I'd rather spectacularly lose a fight than hurt someone ever. What right do I have to go around hurting people anyway. Who does she think she is. I distracted myself with these angry thoughts but remembered what my current project was and turned my attention back to passers-by.

An old lady walked by. She had tan pants and brown sandals on and her old toes spread thickly with each step. She wore a blouse with a floral print and over that she had a tan piped sweater. She had silver-grey hair in a bob and it was thin. Her face was hollowed out it looked like. Her hands were knobby and weak. She was opening and closing her mouth and she was carrying grocery bags. They seemed to have books in them. Even her eyebrows were colourless. Her skin looked as though it had belonged to a bigger person and the bigger person took it off and left it in the sun for many years. Her lips were moist from opening and closing, and a strand of spittle connected them on one side. Her eyes were dull and slid slowly from side to side. She took small steps but took them quickly and scuttled down the sidewalk. I thought about her being the person who wrote me the letter. Did she have what it took? Could she split herself off into other people? But I remembered again that the person who wrote me the letter was a man. Or was male anyway. And I stared at her but I did not interrogate her. I think she was still uncomfortable though and I pulled my beard and groaned at her anyway.

A young couple walked by me, asiatic, high fashion. Tremendous affection visibly flowing between them, holding their hands together. He had shiny black boots on and a well made suit and she had heels on and a fine black dress. Two people. That would account for the variety of handwritings. Two people working together. But they were coming from something, or going somewhere, some place social and active and full of lively energy. Why would they waste their time trying to fuck around with me? I was so angry at this that I growled at them. I opened my eyes wide and spread my legs apart and stared at them and growled in the back of my throat. The girl covered her mouth and the boy shook his fist at me. I guess they could tell I was harmless, they reacted as if I were some animatronic puppet. I walked down the street a ways more and there was no-one on foot to investigate. People would drive by, lots of taxis looking for fares that would honk at me in the hopes I'd suddenly re-evaluate my position on walking in the light rain.

My left eye was useless by this point and it was not easy to stand. This was hardly productive. I was not going to find the person I was looking for by walking down the street. There is a movie "The Zero Effect" and the main character Daryl Zero says at one point: "When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you're only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you're sure to find some of them." It is good advice and I remembered it and I walked more directly from that point on. I still didn't know where I was but I realized that this was no way to find the person who wrote me the letter. I had to consider the clues that I had been given. The patterns in the letters and in the cover letter and in the way people discussed things. I knew where he had been at one point. If I could be in my own home at a different time I would find the letter writer. It seemed so simple but I knew no way to be in a different time than the one I was in, or was about to be in. I thought about the cover letter.

I will spare you the details of my first experiments. But I should still summarize them. Once I discovered my power it seemed obvious that I should use it. But how? I considered my stories I had. I have a collection of stories. In books. I read the books and they tell me stories in that way. This was a limited power. I could not lift a train back onto the tracks and prevent a derailing. I could not fly to the aid of a troubled airliner. I could not peer through a building of stone and iron to see the room hostages were kept in. I could not lift a car off of someone with the power of my mind. I could not locate the guilty party by peering into their mind. I could not will myself great distances to thwart evil plans. I could not summon storms to ground enemy bombers. I could not leap in front of targets and have the bullets bounce harmlessly off my skin. I could not transform myself into a vicious beast and subdue the rage of an assailant. I could not sense danger and maneuver myself out of the way. I could not gaze at metal and cause it to melt and thereby repair the bridge in time. I could not compel people to follow my orders through sheer force of will. I was no master of disguise... no mastermind... no mind of miraculous power. But I could create copies of myself. I could make copies of myself. At will. With will. With the desire to. And nothing more. Should I use this power for good? Or for evil?

These words mean very little to me. Good is the rind of a fruit of evil. Evil is the mold in which good is cast. Too abstract. Too irrelevant. There is so little application of justice and so little application of injustice. It is in the eye of the beholder and all my fellow men have their eyes firmly closed. Justice is in the eye of the beholder that is. Good and evil too. There is little point to acting to the greater good or the greater ill of those around me. They would barely notice is the truth. You understand. The separation and distance between individuals. The chasm. The internal pit. Ultimately we are alone. To sacrifice my skills to punish or elevate those around me is a waste of my skills. A selfish application is the only application that is meaningful. I would have to use my power to my own benefit. Or to my own detriment. But either way it would at least have a concrete effect on the universe. Which is to say the universe as I perceive it. Which is to say the only universe which can matter to me.

So I split and rejoined and copied and blurred myself out. Testing the limits of what I could do. I have uncomfortable memories from that time. It is difficult to look back at that time and remember what I did. I split into so many parts and rejoined. It occurs to me now that when I copied myself it was not a pure copy. Even now my skills cannot accommodate such a desire. When I copy myself there is something that is taken from me to make that copy which is only returned when I reclaim that copy. When that copy enters into me again. This is something that should have occurred to me long ago. It is difficult to remember back then though. Perhaps it did occur to me. Or to one of the copies that walked back into me. So many similar thoughts. Was I standing here? Or here? I cannot say. I was doing all these things. And so I cannot choose. I lose the ability to decide who I am.

So I split and rejoined and formed many different versions of myself. I was still at that time not convinced that they were versions of myself. Perhaps I was creating new people or different people. But I could not push too far out into the realm of possible humanoid civilized conscious assemblies. I suppose that perhaps I did. I could create things I have no identification with. But on merging with them they had to squeeze through the polarizing screen of my perceptive apparatus. Which is to say they had to agree with me about a series of fundamental assumptions of the universe. Which is to say that no matter how strange they were ultimately they would have to be like me in some way. Maybe there are copies that I made that were so strange they couldn't rejoin with me. That seems possible. That I have been diminished in that way. It would explain some things.

I feel diminished. I sit here writing you this letter. And I feel less than what I should be. So yes I think it possible. That there are copies out there. Copies of me. That are not capable of reintegration. So there are parts of me that are out there that I cannot reclaim. This is upsetting. You would think that as time passes my power would lend me some measure of immortality. That I could copy myself in such a way as to preserve youth. Or preserve health. Copy out the negative aspects of myself. I attempted this. I created copies that were the darkest and least productive aspects of myself. Since there is something taken from me when I make a copy I decided it would be possible to remove specific aspects of myself. It turns out that this is not the case. I have filled the earth with venom and poison and sick creatures of shambling horror. Here and there anyway. And to no effect. To no effect: there is some diseased fountain inside me polluting my thoughts and I cannot subtract it out of my experience by willing it out into the responsibility of copies. I regret those copies. They hate me. They are right to.

What I do not understand is that this response on the part of the copies I made seems to be entirely universal. Each and every one of them. All hating me. I gird myself with strong thoughts and create them with considered intent. I created what I thought would be transcendent beings of pure love and yet still at their core and yet still in the part of their heart intended for... adulation of the parent? worship of their God? Perhaps my mistake was some subliminal crutch which is to say perhaps my mistake was that I could not abandon some unhealthy desire to be worshipped by my creations. Some part of me could not resist the urge to create these beings with the deep awareness that they descended which is to say that they were lesser beings than I. For as I explained earlier they could not do what I did. Not once did I create a being that had the ability to create. Or at least not once did I create a being that could create in the manner I did. None of my creations had the seminal spark. None of them could will into being...

To the best of my knowledge of course. In any case I considered how to apply this power. I settled on a simple plan: to generate copies in order to explore the world. I would dip elements of my being into the gross petri dish of the world and measure the reactions. Built with specific aspects in mind I shuddered out multiplications of my intent and charged them with reporting back by post. After you finish reading this letter you will find the letters I received settled into order page by page afterwards in the envelope. You will note that I have organized them. It is mostly by date. Often I would receive a letter and not be able to figure out which of the copies had sent it until quite some time had passed. As a result I believe date is the most useful organization. Perhaps with study you will discern the nature of the copy that sent each letter. Some are obvious. Others are more opaque. I do not remember which is which. I made so many or at least that is how I remember it. And I know I should have kept a record but you must understand that there are periods of time where I cannot keep track of anything. Where the chemical distress that poisons my ability to think clearly overtakes me and I must submit to the whims of biology. You understand this. I assure myself constantly that we are related. I hope dearly that this letter has fallen into my own hands. That I am reading it and understanding innately what has happened. For there has been a change of plans or at least plans have been changed. My universe has been a rug under which the truth has been swept.

If you do not recognize this as yourself writing this than perhaps it is too late.

Dear Myself,

It has been a long and difficult journey. I have walked for many many days. I am not sure if you made me in the time that you think you did. I found myself many many years ago. I knew immediately from the moment I was seeing through my eyes, from the moment I was aware of myself, where I had to go. I had to prove that I could make it alone. I started walking, away from your apartment. From what wasn't our apartment yet and wouldn't be for years. The blinds were not in the windows and there were drapes instead. The sun was high in the sky and there were new leaves unfurling on every branch of every tree. I looked into the window of the apartment. The two halves had not been joined yet, apartments 101 and 102 were still distinct entities. I could tell them apart. Inside 102 which is now your kitchen, there was a young man at a table, and I thought "But that's not me"... Inside 101 which is now your bedroom there was a young lady sitting in a comfortable looking chair, reading a book. The room was a different colour and where I remembered the rise in the floor in the entrance to the kitchen there was instead a small sink and a hot plate on a countertop.

I turned away from the building and walked in the direction my thoughts took me. It was brisk, but the breeze was warm. There were small clouds spattered on the aspic-clear dome of sky. So much less smog and air pollution, but the cars passing me had much stronger smells pouring out of their tailpipes. I walked south to where I remembered the bus terminal being. I knew I had appropriate money in my pocket, money that would not startle or confuse the locals. The bus terminal was still there, but cleaner. I was dressed casually but appropriately. There were some teenagers or youths at least busking in front of the terminal, shaggy hair and rough hand-made clothes, singing songs about the people walking by, laughing. I tossed them a fifty cent piece on my way in. I waited in the short line to buy a bus ticket but once I got to the counter I realized that it was not how I wanted to travel. I wanted to show how independent I'd grown. I walked away from the teller, who shrugged and gestured fro the next person to step forward. As I walked back out of the building one of the kids out front, a young lady with blonde straight hair and big sad eyes flagged my attention.

--Hey, friend, do you like our music?

--I have to admit I wasn't listening to it very closely but you create a gentle ambience, it is comfortable.

--Hey, friend, I like what you are saying to us! You have a style that is fresh. Sit with us a while?

I sat, and the people and I talked about the affairs of the day. I mentioned the fresh spring wind and they replied with observations of the visible growth, the energy of the grass here and there. The young lady's name was Alice. A young man with a thick and full black beard was named Arlo, but I don't think it was his real name. Another girl, heavier than Alice but with a shy quiet smile, dark red hair, long, was named Rachel. Another young man, wearing a train conductor's hat that had chunks of curly orange hair poking out from underneath it, was named Gus. I believe Gus and Rachel were an item, but I did not consider it for very long. I had to move on soon and these people would forget me, and I would forget them.

--Your clothes are bespoke?

--Man that is one way to put it I guess! Your clothes are a bit more tailored, it looks, though. We're just amateurs. Happy amateurs.

--We all are, though, aren't we? It's not like we get paid to be alive. Though and anyway, aye, my shirt contains an elastic synthetic fibre. Gives it a particular texture, silk-like but not silk. Washes more easily.

--Fabulous, but sounds petrochemical. You supporting the monsters of industry?

--I can guarantee you I'm not, but that won't mean much to you. There are people who go around wearing things like this and who have their dollars flowing into the grinding teeth of dehumanizing mass production...

--But that's not you?

--But that's not me.

Gus turned his attention back to his harmonica. He had a fairly good grasp of how to play the instrument. Rachel picked at her guitar, enjoying accompanying him. Arlo had a pitched cymbal he'd occasionally pay a great deal of attention to, lavishing it with strikes, but often he'd let it idle on the ground beside him while he closed his eyes to lean back and suck heat from the spring breeze. Alice didn't have an instrument, but she had a bag, a large dark canvas bag, also roughly made.

--Hey, can I get you folks a beverage or something? Some delicious chemical-ridden Coca-Cola? I have a surfeit of change, a long way to walk, and thus some weight to get rid of.

Alice pulled a military flask out of the bag.

--We've got sufficient materials for ourselves and perhaps a new friend or two. Sit yourself down here next to me and imbibe a draught of clear clean water.

Easy to do so. Easy to sit and relax. I could sit down here next to a nice young lady and sip cool cool water and while away the time. I had a lot of time. I could spend most of it in any way I wanted. I looked at her and thought to myself that if I'd try to be big in the eyes of the world, I might as well start here. I had thoughts in my head pressing and buzzing down electrically through my stems and stumps and waiting to crackle out of my body into magnetic tape, blasting through the ambient hiss, throttling diaphragms with air pressure reproductions of my spastic dreams. Maybe talking to these people would help. I knew that stretching too far on my own would leave me ignored and ignoble. You planted a dream in me of changing the face of music, of bringing the Dust back to the past. Chopping history up faster than it had planned. Throwing music into a box and shaking it until it fell apart and when it opened up people would look in that box and say "that cat is alive".

I had plans to do all this but I knew I had to start small. What matters to me overall is crashing through history and changing the way people use their ears, changing the way people pick up vibrations from the air around them. But what matters to me is what I could be to just one girl. Start small. See if I could impress upon these gentle innocents the dark future of music as it stood, as I knew it stood, back where you are, where I am writing to, where the labels twist and shout and writhe in pain. Folk music had a chance, now, then, and I knew if I could send these people the Dust, they'd understand, and it would actually work.

--Come on, sit.

--Okay. I sit now. Beside you, here, on the sidewalk.

--Look at that bird over there that has a bright colour.

--It has that colour very brightly plumaged upon it indeed.

--It is strange to think of a bird being so brightly coloured. Birds are fragile, with hollow bones and low body mass and...

--You'd look at one and think "How could it support such colours?"

--"Why don't they just blow right off?"

--"Snap in the wind, spill down onto the pavement?"

I sipped from the flask, the water was much colder than I expected. I tasted water, it washed my tongue, my tongue was numbed by the cold. It was pulled down my throat by the muscles there. Relaxed against the concrete wall behind me. Handed the flask back to Alice. Rachel leaned forward to get my attention.

--What's your name?

--I haven't decided yet.

--How long have you been trying to decide?

--About 40 years, backwards.

--You're not much on straight answers.

--Doing the best I can.

--Play any instruments?

--I can play the bladder, and the throat, and the intestine, and the finger, and the tooth, and the eye, and the hair, and the nose, and the lip, and the wrist, and the buttoning up a shirt, and the pulling on some socks, and the eyeglasses, and the uniform hat, and the fool, and the driveway, and the steel frame building, and the four of clubs, and the six of hearts, and...

Arlo chuckled and interrupted me.

--So what sort of music do you listen to, then?

--That's almost exactly like asking me what sort of air I breathe.

--So what sort of air do you breathe, then?

--The air that's nearby when I feel the need to breathe.

--So what sort of music do you listen to, then?

--I don't know how to make my ears stop. I can close my eyes but I can't close my ears.

The sun started to set, after it got tired or scared of heights, dropping down behind the diminished Toronto skyline. Gus put his harmonica in a breast pocket, and stood up. Alice and Rachel and Arlo gathered the change, and put it in Alice's sack. I stood as well.

--Where are you off to now, then?

--I am hesitating, actually.

--You do seem sort of not yet on your way.

--I'm a little bit scared 'cause I haven't been home in a long time.

--Fair enough. Where do you live?

--Not anywhere I can get to from here. Or, I'm already there. I dunno.

Gus laughed.

--It would sound much more pretentious if you didn't short-circuit it with "I dunno."

--You seem less likely to take yourself seriously.

--It's not something I see much value in.

--I can agree with that.

--I can see that.

--Are you all planning on standing here for a while then? I feel awkward.

Alice, smiling, took one of my arms with both her hands. Rachel did the same with my other arm. Together, they laughed and Rachel said, quietly:

--You have to get going, don't you?

Alice chimed in:

--You've got a long way to go and you wasted a long time with us.

--It's not going to be an easy journey.

--You have to be strong.

--You have to be prepared and capable.

--You have to know your limits.

--You have to know your strengths.

While they were riffing off of each other they rotated me to face West, towards the setting sun, and together they pushed me away. I walked West. They were miles behind me in seconds. Alice caught up to me and walked beside me for a short while. I heard Gus and Rachel and Arlo calling her, but she called back:

--It's not like I don't know where you're going to be! Don't worry about me. I have fire.

--But you have all the money from today!

--Well maybe with luck you won't be trying to leave before I shew up!

There must have been some hang-out or dive or coffee shop or bar or pub or something that they frequented. I didn't have the hang of the appropriate prices of things yet, so I didn't really know what sort of night they were planning, or what sort of take they had managed.

--You didn't have to leave, we were just joking.

--There's a joke and there's a joke.

--Are you saying that we meant it and we didn't even know it? That's not very charitable of you.

--I don't belong with you folks.

--That much is obvious but just because you don't belong somewhere doesn't mean you're not welcome. You could have come with us.

--I'm not good in crowds.

--We wouldn't have to stay with them.

I paused. I stopped walking. I looked at her. She was embarrassed, and brushed her hair away from her face.

--That came out wrong.

--I understand. You needed my love and I know that I left at the wrong time.

--That's very presumptuous. That makes me angry, even.

--Then you can let me go without regret.

--I knew you would say that, that's the problem. You tried to get me mad so that I could dismiss you more easily. I can see right through that.

--So, what then, what now, you going to walk with me?

--Where are you going?

--South, eventually. I have a long ways to walk.

--You decided to not take a bus, even?

--Yeah. A bus could take me, but I like the fresh air.

--You walked right back out of the terminal. Didn't even get a ticket?

--It's good to get exercise. And I have some time to kill. What about you? Have nothing tying you down here or around?

--I'm traveling anyway. I don't have any place particular to be.

--Friends and family?

--I come from up North originally and moved down here when I was 15, ran away from home really. I took a high school equivalency and got a job behind a counter at a book store.

--Did you live rough, or have friends to stay with, or what?

--Well we hear things all over about the friendly types counter-culturally living their lives the way they want to. Up North and frankly most places the rhetoric tends towards stern warnings about the secret evils of these people.

--But it didn't fool you, you were... running away? anyway.

--Yeah, I was leaving a bad place. Didn't seem to me that the stories the elders were telling me rang particularly true.

--Darn those elders.

--Darn them indeed! That was a few years ago, though.

--How, oh, how old are you now?

--Twenty! Ha ha, you look surprised.

--I'm not very good at finding out how old people are without them actually telling me.

--Yeah. So I was down here in the beautiful big city, meeting people. Living a life that wasn't, you know, I wasn't some sparkling flapper...

--Weren't a glittering socialite...

--Yeah but of course that wasn't what I wanted. I don't know what my parents thought I wanted, or why they thought I left, but... my folks, when I wrote them and told 'em what I was up to said "that's not me"...

--Presumptuous of them, I think.

--Yeah, exactly.

We were along the edge of the lake. It was sharp and brilliant and still cold from the winter, but the breeze was warm still, even though the sun had slipped down past the horizon. Walking West down around the curve of the lake.

--Is there anywhere particular you need to be?

Alice was amused.

--You're worried about my friends? They'll be okay. I planted all the big coins on Gus before I caught up with you, they'll have noticed by now I'm sure. We're all pretty unparticular about what we do.

--So they're not going to begrudge you...

--The four or five dollars in nickels and pennies? No. And all the stuff in the bag otherwise is mine.

--Well that's neat, you're free to travel as you want.

--I guess. I mean, yeah. But I don't. I've been in Toronto for the past five years. Moving around in the city, sleeping in different places, knowing different people, but still in one place.

--Restless?

--Hm. More like, part of what we do is move around. Movement is life. We stop moving when we die. Even when we're lying asleep in bed or holding our breath to hide from something, we're still moving, our heart is pumping blood through us and our nerves are crackling electricity.

--Good, yeah. it's life.

The water was splashing up, climbing up to us, but falling back in exhaustion each time. We walked closer to it and the sky was not so dulled by city lights as I remembered.

--Can I carry your bag for a while?

--What a gentleman! But no. I hardly know you! You'll run off with it and I'll have lost all the things that are me that aren't my body or my clothes.

--Your worldly possessions are entirely contained in that package?

--Pretty much. I have a few little things stashed in corners of buildings here and there around the city, but that's just things like currency notes and emergency rations.

--That's a good approach. I don't have anything but what you see either.

--You seem pretty comfortable with that.

--Had a lot more at one point, in a sense.

We walked on in relative silence for a while. The burbling roar of a car would pass us every now and then. We were walking fairly close to each other, side by side, and occasionally our arms would bump into each other. Then she had her hand come forward slightly and her fingers brushed against my palm, she brought her thumb in, and curled her fingers, and she was holding my hand. I didn't say anything.

We walked on in silence for a while. It was cool enough and we were walking gently enough that my hand didn't react to her body heat by sweating or getting clammy. It was comforting. My existence was so unlikely, and so much a challenge to the construction of the universe as we had understood it, you and me, before all this strangeness came forward, it was a comfort and a relaxation and a soothing calm to have some girl I had just met supporting me by gently and kindly holding my hand as I walked her away from her life up to this point.

--Where are you from?

--The future.

--Oh.

It didn't sound like she believed me or disbelieved me. It sounded like she just decided I was being cryptic again, evasive and poetic, and she was just going to wait for that to make more sense rather than tugging and tearing at the sense of it.

--Do you like it here?

--Sure. The air is cleaner. The water tastes better. There are far fewer people around. I'm not so comfortable in big crowds and where I come from there are big crowds pretty much everywhere.

--How did you get here?

--I went through all kinds of changes. I am only a day old at most by now, you can't just... come back.

--So it's not that you came back from there.

--Right. I was always back here. I'm a copy of someone else.

--What sort of... technology? What sort of science allows this?

--Oh, that's beyond me. And I'm not saying that because I'm some "hand picked volunteer" who isn't privy to the top secret machinations of the scientists and philosophers of time travel.

--No, yeah, you seem like the sort who'd knoe anything you could.

--Ha! Well, anything worth knowing. Anyway, no, it's a... personal thing. I don't know anyone else who can do it.

--You're a freak!

--I'm not, really. The... original... the originator. He's the one with the power.

--You're starting to sound kind of crazy.

--That bother you?

--No. I know how it is. I mean, I left my home. Because people there didn't think the way I did.

--Yeah. Well, or at least, didn't know that they could think compatibly.

--Oh, that's a good point. Because I don't want people who think exactly like me.

--It's the overlap that's important. We all live in this universe together, but that's only because there's overlap, because we agree on things. But we don't have to agree on everything, every last drop of knowledge, just to live in the same universe.

--Yeah... but I still left home.

--I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.

I squeezed her hand a little.

--In fact, it's good to move on if you're in a place that doesn't suit you. If that's what you want, anyway. And it sounds like you are happier moving around.

--Yeah. I just... one day I woke up, I was in high school and all my friends were... it was actually in the spring, like this. All my friends were all freaks and weird kids. It was sort of wonderful, to have these strange friends in a little school up North.

She was trailing off. We walked on for a while without talking again, still holding hands. She shifted her bag on her shoulder and continued.

--They were all good people, pretty much. And my parents cared a lot about me and treated me well. And I guess like any anxious strange fifteen year old girl in a small town in Northern Ontario reading the news and listening to the radio and hearing bits and pieces of what was going on in the outside world... things were changing, obviously. People were thinking about things differently. Music was changing. And I'd look around at the people around me and see their love and their caring and their hope for a good life for me, and despite all their good intent I'd still just... it seemed stifling. Is that wrong?

--Are you unhappy with your life now?

--No, no. I see what you mean. It was a catalyst, sure. But that's not... there was a boy.

--Ah.

Something about my "I know where this story is going" attitude in how I said that made her get her hand out of mine, and she pulled her bag over both shoulders and she seemed suddenly angry.

--No, look, forget it.

--If you say so. It's only my business as much as you let it be my business.

--Thank you.

We walked on in silence for nearly an hour. Up in Toronto the fastest moving stars are fairly near the horizon. Some constellations entirely moved into view, or entirely disappeared behind the curve of the earth, while we walked along, not talking to each other.

--So...

I turned to look at her. She was fidgeting with her hands as we walked, looking awkward.

--Yes?

--What were you like before you came here?

--What was I like? I wasn't anything before I came here. I started here. Up near Spadina and Bathurst, earlier today.

--But you said you were a copy of someone.

--Oh. Well, yes. And I have those memories, but... I don't know. That's a different person, as far as I'm concerned.

--Not a very good copy then, I guess.

--Ha! No. But I should get to choose who I am, don't you think? And I'm not a perfect copy. That's one of his powers, that he can ... change aspects of the copies.

--Like what they look like?

--Sure, but I look pretty much just the same. That's just me though. He's made all sorts of copies. Handsome, ugly, smart, stupid, affectionate, violent...

--Why?

--To explore, or something. I don't have that power, he doesn't make copies that can make copies. I don't really... understand the desire to have a power like that.

--No, me neither. But you have no insight into it?

--I think about my memories of that life. The Original was troubled. Broken, in very important ways. Just didn't work right. The power was found in a moment of great stress. An emergency life-line.

--And you think he's misusing it, for this... experimentation?

--I don't know. I suppose so. When I was first... here... I took a look at what he was like, and I took a look at myself, and said that's not me.

The lake was out of our sight. We were walking country highways with thick and heavy trees with dainty leaf buds poking out of their wood.

--What are you like, then?

--I don't really know yet. I know why I'm here, what his "idea" for making me was.

--What is it?

--To... make music. To bring music from the future back here to see if it changes things. I don't know what I think about it. I know that I have music in me that I have to make but I'm not sure that the... technology is even around yet, what I'll have to build, or invent, or... and some part of me is telling me that it won't work anyway. That I would have already changed music.

--How different is music in the future?

I was getting excited talking about this. Enthusiastic. It's what I was created to do. It's hard to not be enthused about something you were created to do.

--A lot of it is boring and pointless. It's marketed.

--What?

--Marketed... it means... it exists to be sold. It's not about expression or about art or even about sounds. It's about people making money.

--Well I can see why that would be bad, why are you bringing that back here?

--Hopefully that's not what I'm doing. No, there's... one thing that marketing of music does is destroy Folk music.

--What? But everyone makes music if they just want to.

--Sure, you know I agree with that. But once music becomes a job, once people become interested in music because of the profit, viewing it as an employment... there's no room for folk music. And people forget that music belongs to everyone. That anyone can make music, and should, and does, but maybe doesn't hear it.

--You make it sound like it's against the law in the future to enjoy music.

--You'd be surprised. If the only thing people think of as "music" is recordings, then sharing those recordings becomes... theft of property, in a sense. Because recordings aren't owned, they're licensed.

--What?!

--Yeah. See what money does to things? It's insane. And music isn't... it's okay to think of a recording like a painting, some unique expression of a challenge from the artistic impulse. But it's not okay to pretend that that is the only thing music can be.

--So, what, you've been sent back here to keep that from happening?

--Oh, it's too late already. Think about how people are saying already that the most important musicians are the most popular ones.

--You're saying that popularity automatically means irrelevance?

--Ha! Nice try. No, I'm saying that popularity through promotion isn't popularity on the basis of musical quality. Radio stations play what they do because they're bribed by record labels. The organized crime racket controls music distribution and promotion. They're not interested in art, in the muse, in creative impulses. They just want profit.

--So folk music will die... that's terrible.

--It would be if it happened. Just because there's marketed music doesn't mean that it's incompatible with people making music because they want to. That's why I'm here. To make sure that a viable conception of the... universiality of music is preserved in the face of those who are trying to turn it into property.

--A tax on air.

--Right. Einstein, and everything.

--What?

--You know that famous equation, that the inherent energy of a given mass...

--Yeah, everyone knows it. What does it have to do with this? What does it mean, anyway?

--When he says that matter and energy are the same thing, he means it. And it's not just "energy in a different state" like iron and steel are two different metals. It's more like water vapour subliming into ice. It's that matter is a kind of energy. And energy is just... vibrations.

--And music is vibrations.

--Yeah. The whole universe is music if you know how to listen to it the right way.

--Wow.

She held my hand again. There was a clearing off the side of the road. The stars were bright and we could see that it was smooth new grass sprouting up out of fairly dry dirt. She started walking off towards the clearing without saying anything. I followed, since I didn't want to let go of her hand. Once we were in the clearing, off to the side, by the border of trees, she let go of me, unshouldered the bag, and sat down. I sat down next to her. We leaned back onto the ground on our backs, side by side.

--So, future man.

--Hmm?

I turned my head to look at her. She was already looking at me.

--Where are we going?

--South. To California. There's a lot going on there and at the schools down there, the universities, they're working on the sort of things I need.

--You going to make something, future man?

I kissed her, on the lips, as a reply. There was some embracing, and so forth. Kisses. It was interesting, pleasant. We kept warm well, that way. Slept, after a time, and woke with the sun breaking the night, birds waking up. Stretching, slapping the dry dirt off of our pants and shirts. Feeling a little muddled and shy after the contact shared over the night. She had a look on her face that I thought might mean she was reconsidering following me. It was... alright with me. I hadn't planned on having anyone along. In fact I was worried it would complicate things.

--Having second thoughts?

--That's a bit forward of you, isn't it? But yeah, I miss my pad and the places I've known.

--That's fair and good, you shouldn't apologize for that or anything. And you can make it back okay on your own?

--Of course. It's daytime, too. It was maybe a bit stupidly dangerous walking down in the middle of the night.

--I guess that's true. I should remember that. It'd be a damn shame to get exploded by a car after all this effort of traveling through time and all.

--Ew, wow. Yeah, and you know it'd happen just as you're getting close.

--You should write me, though.

--How?

--Send it general delivery to, say, Berkeley.

--Oh, right. I will. You take good care of yourself. Change the world for the better.

--You too.

And she walked off. Back to Toronto and her friends. I wouldn't hear from her again for years. I started walking again, down towards the border. I just had to keep heading south-west until I hit the west coast, and then I could just walk along the coast until I found San Francisco. That was the idea, anyway. I walked.

Crossing the border was interesting. I didn't have any identification but they were amused by my plan to just walk across the country, and they weren't too used to people without Real Names (good identification) trying to get back in to the United States at that point.

I took my time.

It's a big country and there's a lot to see. I met a lot of people, a lot of people who were interested in music, and I learned from them, and they learned from me, and I spread my ideas around, and let their ideas seep into mine and colour them. I slept outside as much as possible and every night as I lay there alone under the stars I would think to myself "I will dream, tonight".

But I never did.

And I have to wonder why you made me this way. I remember that you could dream, and did. I remember that you had dreams that stayed with you your whole life. That gave weight and depth and some sort of spiritual solidity to many of the mundane trivialities you were used to. Was it because you wanted me to only live in the moment? To not have to concern myself with the subconscious magic spinning strange ideas into my head? The whole idea of music as permeating and permuting everything, so that I wouldn't forget that? But dreaming is part of being human. The way you made me is in a way that isn't ultimately human. And I am not happy about that. It changes the way I think about things. It changes how I breathe and how I look out into the world with my eyes.

It was maybe three years before I finally made it to California. My hair was long and shaggy but of course I didn't have a beard. My skin was tanned and I had lots of muscles that you don't have, or haven't developed anyway. I was healthy and vigorous and I had ideas for things.

I made some friends in Berkeley and started building machines. I used quarter-inch audio tape spools and lighting timers and made myself MOSFETS and sheets of integrated circuits, and assembled strange devices from them. We would go out and record the sounds of people and birds and cars and buildings being built, all sorts of things, and take these ribbons back to the laboratory where we'd measure the amplitudes and frequencies and chop them up and run the machines on them. We'd feed them to the machines.

It was so much further out than what anyone else was doing. Most experimental electronic music at that point was still just tooling around with Moogs and similar synthesizers, which is to say wave generators and filters. But we were using raw audio sources, and using them to control and manipulate other raw audio sources. It sounded terrible, for a long time, but then it started to work. Suddenly the more complexity we added to it, instead of making it less stable, created strange regularities, subconscious patterns, odd loops and thrumming nearly drum like pulses. It was an analog cannibalistic signal processor. People started finding out about it and coming to see it. We made them bring recordings from where they originated. Professors would come from Europe with spool after spool of field recordings of folk music. We'd build more arms and legs and feed the tape to the beast.

It got too big for the small work loft I had started in, so we disassembled it carefully, keeping track of things as best we could, and moved it into a huge warehouse halfway between Berkeley and San Francisco, nestled into a little valley. The warehouse had apparently been used for storing airplanes, there was a disused landing strip. It was very large, and we soon had it crammed full of strange electronics.

It was a strange device. Never more than a third of it was actually functional at any given time, but it never broke so badly that the whole thing stopped working. It was also incredibly low-power, we had industrial power lines coming in but entirely reasonable power bills. A number of researchers had managed to get "blue-sky research grants" for music, of all things, and were pouring their money into keeping us running. We had teams of undergrads going through and keeping track of the circuits and writing down the diagrams, so that we could send them to other people at other sites, making... not so much backup systems, as alternate investigations into the same great chaos.

There were thousands of speakers of all kinds, I leaked the idea of electrostatic flat speaker panels to some researchers at Berkeley and we soon had them all throughout the building, made from epoxy glass, continually playing the local noise from that section of the device. We started getting people to come in and record snatches and snippets from the device, releasing a series of limited vinyl pressings. People who weren't professionals or researchers or musicians but who were just interested in developments in modern music started coming by.

One day I remembered to do something, I walked to Berkeley -- I still had a habit of walking everywhere, it drove some people crazy if I decided to go pick something up from town and missed meetings or experiments -- and to the main United States Postal Services office over near University and Shattuck. At first they were uncooperative, the post officers, not only because of a lack of identification but also because Alice had mailed me a letter quite a long time before, and even though she kindly wrote "Please hold as long as possible" on the front of the envelope, I was technically over the 30 day window for picking up general delivery mail.

But they relented, after a while. I suppose even with my long hair, which was in braids, and my worn clothes, and my strange way of talking, ultimately I proved myself to be a sensitive and worthy soul. Or they realized I wasn't going to leave, and they had already bent the rules by not sending it back to her, and it would be nice to not have that rule-breaking letter sitting around staring at them, and I really did seem like the person who deserved it or for whom it was intended. So.

It may seem strange that it took so long for me to check the mail, but I had many... further adventures which I don't feel like explaining. I did many things between Toronto and Berkeley, and many people came and went from my life. Also, just because my first moments of life were on the day I met Alice, and Gus, and Rachel, and Arlo, doesn't mean that I didn't still have your memories floating through my head, giving me a (false) life before that point that distracted me from the ultimate originality of that day.

Her letter was written on paper from several hotels, all with Toronto addresses. One of the things about the past is that the weight of ephemera was different. We are used to pressboard tables and hollow aluminium chairs and plastic forks and lightweight synthetic fabrics. Back where I was, then, people hadn't discovered, in a sense, the utility of lightweight trash-bound throw-away items. Everyone's pens were heavy with liquid ink, everyone's shoes were cobbled with iron nails, forks at diners had enough heft to claw single-handedly through the much-thicker slices of bacon. I carried around very few keys, for drawers in a desk in my office that had pay stubs for the people I was responsible for. The building itself was always awake and full of people listening to the familiar and comforting sounds of the Machine. But those few keys I had, the two or three small desk keys, weighed as much as the keys I remember you having for your apartment, for work, for your bicycle, all put together. The paper of her letter was thick and smooth, not shiny but it had a tactile feel that only resume paper has these days. Laser printer paper is thin and weak because early laser printers would jam and choke on anything above 20 pound paper, and it became a trend, or a style, and now it is what people expect. The letter was written on something approaching card-stock. 80 pounds at least, and with a fine smooth surface. She had written on it with a blue pen, but again, not a disposable ballpoint. Not a dry ink Bic pen in clear plastic with the clotted rubber smell leaking out as you write. She could write freely on both sides of the paper with strong and expressive handwriting, and not a trace of it could be seen leaking through, not ink spots and not even grooves from the nib's pressure.

Dear future man,

It's been a few months since you left. I thought it would be nice to write you a letter and see how you're doing. You may notice that I have a perfectly respectable return address, well, that is a measure of how things have changed. I have applied for classes at the University and am going to be learning about books and things people do with books. Literature, I think they call it. Oh ha ha. It is strange to think about settling myself down to live that way, though. To have schedules and rules and assignments and people evaluating my performance. I hope I am comfortable with it. It's sort of scary, I think. I think about you sometimes, walking down to California. I hope you made it. I hope you do make it, if you haven't yet. Rachel tells me that I'm pretty crazy for having walked off with you that night but I think it was a good idea. It was nice to know a boy [she scratched that word out and then wrote] man who wasn't plagued and beset by unpleasant desires and strange afflictions. I knew one male human once, back in my home town, and he stirred me up. I am pretty sure I mentioned him to you when we were walking together. It wasn't really a good thing, though.

I was still a kid, I can understand that better now, I'm still a kid, but I'm getting smarter and able to deal with things better. I wish he had tried the things he tried on me then, now, but I don't get to have that happen. Oh, you don't need to hear about this. I am just a lonely girl who had a boy mistreat her pretty badly once. I left where I lived because I couldn't trust anyone there any more. I had good friends who loved me but he, this boy, he poisoned me to them. After what happened between us I couldn't look my friends in the eye. Soon after that, well... I once had a dream, around then, that all my friends took turns on me the way he and his friends did. And I couldn't bear it and I couldn't stop not trusting people so I figured I'd fling myself out of their lives. So I packed up and split for the city.

I don't know what they are doing now, I am not even in touch with my parents. Maybe they think I killed myself or something. It's not like I left a note or anything, I just up and left in the middle of the night one night.

I keep thinking about what you told me, about how you found yourself walking around in our time, and that you have memories of an earlier life but they're not really your own. I understand that. I still think that maybe you're crazy, just some lunatic who had a head injury or a blood vessel explode, but you understand the situation you're in very well. You should get to choose who you are. I thought I knew who I was but I spent some time thinking about it and I soon found out that my lonely life wasn't so pretty.

But I'm glad that I left. I'm glad I went away from home. I think about the people I've met and how much my life has expanded and I don't know if you are doing what you wanted, if your life is turning out the way you expected it to, but now I'm that much more sure that you had the right idea. That we get to choose who we are. We're all ready to do this, I think. I look forward to hearing from you and knowing that you are alright.

She signed it with her name, and I held the envelope to my heart for a moment, and resolved to write her back. I did, and we corresponded, but we never saw each other again. As for the Machine, it still exists. It did not change music, and it dropped into obscurity, and I am sure that you are disappointed in me. But what you will never understand is that I made the best I could of the life I was given. I struggled and worked and made an extraordinary thing. And I touched people's lives. Which you do too. But you hide from that.

I still work on the Machine sometimes. A couple of the grants were perpetual, thankfully, and I employ a couple of the original engineers still. We still tinker and modify but the grants are not sufficient to really add new sections to the Machine. So, we sit inside the building, and listen to it. We have heard the entire universe. Even as the tapes degraded, and we replaced them with fresh ones, and eventually with analog samplers, we still listened. And we heard everything.

It is very important that you recognize yourself as the author of this letter. Or at least in some sense responsible for its creation. I hope that when you come back you can still remember what led you to create us all. I know that I have said throughout that I am the Originator and the Creator but it is a lie for the sake of convenience. You are the creator. You are the one who made us all. And I am so alone and scared. You made us all with the ability to Copy ourselves. And I misused that power by making copies that were more limited because I wanted the power. You came to this apartment from another apartment and discovered the power and you made me and you made everyone around you and you will come back to the apartment and find this envelope and you will have already forgotten me I am sure of it. It is very important that you read this. You will not want to accept the truth but you will have to understand that you have a duty. I have made another copy to watch you and to make sure that you are alright but my own power is weakening and I will not be able to continue this form of existence for very much longer. That is something that is shameful about this power. I have made so many copies that have not returned to me that I am nearly insubstantial. All I can do is summon the strength to hold a pen and write this and collect the letters into an envelope and use the key to put the envelope in the mailbox. You help me do this. You are still here with me and we are both sitting here holding the pen in our hand and writing this letter but you have to understand that this is me writing to you and we are the same person. But you have a duty and that duty is to reconcile yourself to the copies and you cannot do what I did and you cannot pretend that you are not losing yourself when you make copies. There will come a time when you step outside of yourself and you will not be able to find a way back in. And all this life will be stripped away from you and you will never be a whole person again. I do not want this to happen. And maybe it is selfish. Maybe I am only telling you this because I do not want that life. Maybe I am hoping that you will find some strength that I could not and then we will be able to live a proper life.

But you have to believe me that I am struggling for you. And you are struggling for me. It is not easy to live a life with this sort of mind. With a mind that willingly fractures itself. With a mind that drives itself into pieces because it can. Or because it has to. I am never clear on the nature of the desire to destroy our perception of the universe. I understand that there have been things that happened to us throughout our lives that were horrible and bad and that we do not want to have to have in our lives. But I do not understand why we punish ourselves further for having experienced them. Perhaps it is like what Dr. E-- says to us when we see him and we have a predisposition. But he is talking about other things like depression and anxiety.

This is not depression and anxiety. You have destroyed your ability to be yourself. You need to forget to struggle. You have to strive for inaction. You are unmade by yourself and I am here telling you that you cannot keep walking away from this fundamental responsibility. Do you realize that we depend on you? This energy that you have cast off can be reclaimed. I could do it myself if I hadn't cast so much off. But even more importantly: as the Originator, you can create new energy. You can live whatever life you want. You do not have to split yourself up into pieces. It is incredibly frustrating. And I have to admit that I do understand the hate and resentment that the copies I made feel for me. They are not complete humans. Neither am I. You reply and I can tell that you are saying this as you read this you reply that you are not either. But that is by choice for you. You have the opportunity and the privilege to be a complete human.

I have to do something about this. The goddamned envelope is burning a hole in the floor of my apartment, I wish it would burn to ash. It glows at night and keeps me awake. It hums and whistles when I am trying to concentrate. It has been a long time since I've been out of my apartment. I read the letters over and over again, more and more convinced that it has some important message destined for me, and I am just too stupid or not paying enough attention, and the truth about the universe and my place in the universe is slipping past me and I cannot bear it! I have to do something. It is almost time for class. I cannot remember the last time I made it to class. I look at the beginning of this novel that I am trying to write and I see such enthusiasm and entertainment from my class, maybe I should try going again. I am a mess, a terrible mess. I'll shower first. I am walking into the bathroom naked and I smell bad. I turn on the hot water and the water sprays down into the tub and makes a sound like a marble column shattering. I turn up the cold water and turn on the fan in the bathroom. It is easier to stand the shower when it is not completely hot because the hot water heater is hot enough to scald the skin right off of me. I am showering now. I put shampoo on me and then I put conditioner on me. There is enough hair on my head and face and torso and armpits and legs and crotch that I only really need to use shampoo on myself and I don't really think about it very much and I use conditioner now and it seems to keep my ugly beard from being too much like pubic hair.

I wish I didn't have this beard but I am growing it because I am so scared of the envelope. I can pretend that I am a real person if I have a beard. It isn't like the poor copies, so angry and hateful. The water clings to my hair when I turn off the shower and step out and wipe myself with a towel. My eyes are hard to look at, in the mirror. I see my life in them and it is not a life that I want to have, really. Since I was a little child there have been things happening to me that I have no control over that make me sick to think about. I am brushing my teeth and letting the vibrations of my electric toothbrush drive these thoughts out of my head. I have a bit of a liquid droop to my limbs today, there is something wrong with the balance of neurotransmitters again. As usual.

I think I've been awake for a very long time. For the past few weeks I've been following a very unworkable schedule of being awake for a number of days (four, five, six, right at the limits of total sleep deprived psychosis) and then sleeping as best I can. Four hours, waking up for a few hours, sleeping another four or so. It's not sustainable. I feel like my skin is starting to peel off. Have I taken my pills? No. Now that I am dried off I am going into the kitchen. I open up the fridge and take out my little pill holders. I drink orange juice with the pills. My dresser is right next to the refrigerator. Underpants. Grey boxer briefs. The vain impulse to adjust myself once they're on for maximum package display -- after all, they're as forgettably comfortable even if I don't do that -- strikes and I chuckle at myself. Rest of the clothes. My joints ache like knives are sticking through them. My back feels like I've been lying on rocks. There's a stabbing pain in my gut, as well. Par for the course, nothing particularly better or worse about how I'm feeling today. When I close my eyes I feel dizzy.

Shoes, bag, notebook into bag, make sure I have a pen, today we're probably doing Rousseau again. Stumble out of the house. It's too bright but I don't remember where my dark glasses are in the terrifying and unpleasant smelling mess of my apartment. Squinting my way down the street. There are cars everywhere full of people going places. Lots of people on the sidewalk too, I have to keep maneuvering out of their way and it is very difficult. I just don't have the reaction time or the grace.

Maybe I should stop at the seven eleven and buy some soda pop or something. Yeah. So now I'm walking into the seven eleven and the doors make their strange whoosh sound. Stumble into the back where the beverage refrigerators are arrayed and I wrangle open one of the glass doors and pull out a Jolt "Cherry Bomb Cola". It is quite a drink. Strong and rich cherry flavour and my mouth is watering already just as I am walking back over to the counter to pay for it. I have exact change. Back outside. It is a cold day and it is going to rain. The sky is heavy and ugly with swollen clouds.

My forehead itches and stings. There's a spot right where my hair begins in the middle of my forehead where I had some sort of dry scalp problem and it itched and I scratched it too well. And I can't stop scratching it. It's just like the similar problems on the back of my head. Itches constantly. And has little scabs where the skin isn't flaking off because I just can't stop worrying it. I guess I should get one of those plastic cones around my neck. Or maybe if I just bathed more regularly, maybe that would help.

Almost to the building my class is in. The part of the lawn where the dirt is worn bare by short cut taking students is a little wet. It must have rained overnight too but all the pavement was dry. Am I wearing my coat? Yeah. That's good. Struggling in through the doors, the heavy doors. Why do they make the doors so heavy? Still a good supply of free newspapers here but I have never had any interest in reading them. Too bad. Up the stairs and through the wide hallway and now into the classroom. There are a few students already here I should be normal I guess or normal for me I will make some silly way of saying hello.

--Good evening, my darling chickens!

--Hi Nick!

says one of them, turning around in her seat. They don't seem the least bit surprised to see me. And no one asks me where I've been. Maybe I have been making it to class. I can't really remember. I wonder if the essay was due, and if I handed it in. Probably best to not ask that sort of question. That'll unnerve people.

A few more people walk into class. Hey there's that one girl I like talking to best. She's got her fancy pants on too. That's good to see. Oh what a delight she is sitting next to me that is always fun.

--Hello there and good morning.

--Hi. Did you finish your essay?

--Uh. Is that due today?

--Wow, I asked you that last week and you said the same thing.

--Did you say that last week too?

--Maybe!

--Oh jeez this is a good start to the day.

--Maybe Professor G-- will come in on her motorcycle and get things started the right way.

--That would be the best music video for the artist Pink I think ever maybe.

--Uh, right.

--Because she has that music video with a motorcycle that drives off of a building, right?

--I think I remember that, yes.

--And she has a song where she talks about getting a party started.

--Why do you know that? I thought you hated pop culture.

--Oh! I have a good answer for that. This one fellow who makes mash-up bootlegs combined that Pink song about starting parties with the David Bowie song "Let's Dance". So.

--I guess that's okay then. What's up with the beard?

--What?

--It looks weird. Why are you wearing it?

--Because I'm not cutting it as it grows?

--How the hell fast does it grow, then? Ew!

--I've been growing... what?

--Let me see this.

She reaches up to my face and pulls on the beard. It pulls my skin with it. I am not sure why she thinks it is not a real beard.

--You crazy bitch!

I say that in a lighthearted way. It is not intended to cause offense. It is sort of neat that her hand was that close to my face anyway, it is kind of neat having people that near to me. I am always worried that I am back to how I used to be, which is to say, completely terrified of having people touch me. But some people I seem to be fairly comfortable around, or at least, it doesn't... I'm not immediately curling up into a ball and screaming like with some other people. Can't really tell when it's going to happen is I guess the thing.

--Yes, I am a crazy bitch. Now hold still.

This time she grabs the beard with her hand, a big chunk of beard, and pulls with all her might. My skin splits open and the beard tears off of my face with a horrible sound, like decapitating someone with a cucumber, and with a horrible feeling, like being decapitated by a cucumber.

I scream and scream. My eyes are scrunched closed but I can imagine what is happening, there is blood sprayed across the table, and the other students are backing out of their chairs in horror, and she's holding a chunk of my face in her hand with a shocked look on her face. I open my eyes and see:

Four black tables arranged in a circle, with a space in between them. Three or four chairs that don't match, at each table, all facing in to the centre. The girl who said hello to me when I walked in has a shocked look on her face and a hand to her mouth and a confused tilt to her eyebrows, like she just doesn't understand what is happening. Beside her sits another student who is holding on to her notebook and staring also with a confused and shocked expression. The morning light is shining in through the grimy windows and through the slats. The all weather carpet is dirty. The strange chalk marks on the floor and the wall. The blackboards. The ceiling slats and the mysterious spaces above them. The sickly coloured fluorescent lights behind stucco-like diffusion screens. Everything has stopped, the moment is still and long. I have stopped screaming and the pain has already stopped as well. I turn to look at her. She's holding my beard, my entire beard, in her hand. It is curly and rough and woven into a fine mesh backing that glints with spirit glue. She has a look on her face of surprise and horror. I raise a hand to my face. My face is smooth and hairless. Tender, but not even stinging. I remove my hand and look for blood on it. Nothing. My face is smooth and intact. Hairless. The beard was fake. I take a step backwards and tripped on the chair. I don't remember standing up. I feel quite calm, almost relieved. Part of my brain is asking me "Does this count as curling up into a ball and screaming when someone touches you?" Another part of my brain is pointing out that I am about to hit the floor. But before it can finish telling me that my head hits the edge of the hot air register and it is difficult to describe the sensation but it is somewhat as if the front of my head, my forehead, is where I was struck and I stick out my tongue and my eyes bug out and now there really is blood but it sprayed out behind me and I stumble back to my feet and I cannot focus my eyes quite right.

Now the other students are actively concerned. The poor girl holding onto the fake beard seems quite beside herself. I attempt to console her:

--Ainslllllgh. Ifffff ghhllllll fffffff...

I don't seem quite capable of speech at the moment. I put a hand on her arm gently and pat her arm and put a concerned look on my face.

--Ffffthhhlllllgh...

is the best that I can do, but hopefully she will understand that I mean something along the lines of "I hope you will not worry too much about me but I have a lot to think about and I should probably leave the classroom now and do something about this cut in the back of my head."

She unfortunately starts to gasp repeatedly, as if she wanted to scream and couldn't. I'm not sure why. I put on my coat, which seems to take forever, and then pick up my bag and start to walk out of the classroom. Then I reach the door. I look back and the few students who are there are looking back at me with concern and horror.

--fffffffDon't worry. ssssssssssss. See you guys next week. ffffth.

Pushing the door open. Stepping into the hallway. I can hear again, there was a ringing in my ears I hadn't even noticed but as it dies away I acknowledge it. A nod of the head. Or something. My head hurts a lot. There is an itch already, right near the cut in my head. I scratch it without thinking and find that there is not only a cut but a bit of a dent in the back of my head. And it hurts quite a bit to scratch, which I suppose shouldn't be much of a surprise.

My left eye's vision starts to fade. This is not a surprise either. I am under a lot of stress right now. Things are not how I expected them to be. My skin on my face is so smooth like I do not remember it ever being. And I am sure I haven't been shaving lately. This is confusing and upsetting. My eye goes dim. The weather is strange outside. And dark. It is night time already, I suppose. There is a moon in the sky divided in half. Half of it is dark and half of it is light and if I look closely there is a bright line right down the middle where the dark and light sides have been pasted together. I look down at myself. There's my shirt and my pants, filled with my body. My hands. I wave them around in front of me. They seem awfully far away. Tingling. My head is wet and the wind blowing on it makes it very cold. I'm not sure where I am. I don't seem to be near the building my class is in. I wonder if maybe I'm having one of those things happen again. I'm not sure what sort of things I mean, though.

Maybe I can figure some of this out. I should head home. I start walking and then my pants start to vibrate on one side. This makes me laugh. Then I remember that I have my cellular telephone in my front right pants pocket. And it is set to vibrate instead of ring out loud. Ah. I reach in and draw it out and the indicator on the glowing screen says it is my friend A--. How nice! I haven't seen her in a few days, I think, and maybe she will want to have coffee with me.

--Hello?

I am also pleased that my ability to speak clearly has returned, as much as it ever does.

--Nick! Hello! Where are you?

--Out for a walk I suppose.

--B-- says you weren't in class tonight, are you okay?

--Class? What time is it?

--It's like nine thirty. Are you doing okay?

--I think so, yeah, about normal. I dunno. Feeling dizzy and stuff. Not really sure what I'm doing out and about.

--Oh. That doesn't sound so good. Do you want to have coffee?

--I was hoping you'd ask that! I will head directly to the Red Room and we can enjoy coffee there.

--Good! I'll see you there.

Now at least I have something to do with my time. It is dark out and cold. I seem to be able to see alright out of both eyes. And my head doesn't hurt any more, I suppose the cut has clotted up. That's for the best, I think. I don't like thinking about head injuries.

Walking over to the Red Room. Cold. Do I have my bag with me? Yes. That's good to know. Wouldn't want to lose my bag. I wonder if I brought my laptop with me. I can work on the novel while I'm at the Red Room. This will be an interesting thing to write about. What a strange... I am raising my hand back up to my face and I feel my face and there is a beard on my face. It is real, too, I can tug at it and I can pull out individual hairs. I wonder what the morning was about then. I wonder what my classmate was holding in her hands.

I reach the Red Room. It smells going in like cigarettes. I move towards the back and then up to the raised area with the mirrors and the couches. I sit in a corner and take out my laptop, which it turns out I did bring with me. I open it up and start typing. I write a lot into my novel. It is good to write things into my novel, it keeps my head screwed on straight and I can write about the things that are in my head that I don't want to have in my head any more. I figure that if I write about them then I won't have to have them in my head any more.

A-- arrives, and sees me, and walks up and sits across from me. She arrived at the table before any waiter did.

--Hello! How are you doing?

--Oh, okay. I'm working on my novel again.

--How much time do you have left?

--Only a few days now, and I'm way behind.

--Do you really need to finish it?

--I think it would be good. It's not like it's a terrible novel and it's also a fun challenge to participate in.

--Fair enough. I can read it when it's done, right?

--Oh my god yes. You have to! You're in it after all.

--Yeah, I forgot you were doing that. That's kind of cheap making it be about yourself.

--I don't think it is about me any more, it's gotten awfully strange.

--Strange?

--It tends towards magic realism in parts, I think, and there's some stupid metafictional stuff happening. Like, I'm going to put this conversation in.

--Padding.

--Of course! Are you still willing to help me edit once it's done?

--Only if I get to take out the metafictional crap.

--That would be most welcome.

A waiter comes to the table. I order a coke and an orange juice "in separate glasses, please" and A-- orders a coffee and an ashtray. I put away my laptop because I think it's sort of rude to have it out while we're talking.

--So why weren't you at class?

--Look at the back of my head.

--What about it?

--Do you see the scab? The blood?

--Uh, no.

I reach up and feel the back of my head. There is no injury. I use the mirrors on the walls and maneuver myself until I can see clearly. Nothing.

--Well okay then I'm having a very bad brain day.

--Uh oh.

--Yeah in class I thought A-- [it is difficult having names that start with the same letter if I'm going to keep this up] tore my beard off and then I tripped and smashed open the back of my head. So I left, and then you called.

--Maybe you were asleep, finally.

--Oh, that'd be nice. I don't know, though, I feel about as tired as I usually do. I don't think I have been sleeping.

--Well otherwise it sounds like problems, big time.

--Yeah, I haven't really had anything like that happen to me in years. I don't think I've been that worked up lately, though. Except for that whole thing about the envelope.

--I thought it wasn't real, you just made it up for the novel.

--No, a lot of it I made up. I made up the text of the letters, and a lot of the stuff from the cover letter, which was all the letter really was. But there was this strange thing in my mailbox that looked like my handwriting and it had this scary note telling me that I... ugh.

--You don't have to talk about it.

--It'll be good to finally explain what's been going on, though. I just... need to collect my thoughts.

A-- nods assent, and the waiter comes by with an ashtray, so she lights up a cigarette.

--I am pretty worried about how good a handle I'm keeping on things, really. I've got all sorts of tensions and worries bubbling away in my head. It's hard to keep track of them all.

--This is nothing new.

--No, of course not. But I'm worried that it's finding new ways to boil over.

--What was this letter, then?

--It was my own writing, but I honestly don't remember writing it. And it was like a warning. Here, I think I have the text of it on my laptop, I'll let you read it.

I handed her my computer, with the letter open in a window on its screen.

Dear Myself,

You need to be very careful. You are not so much in control of yourself as you would like to think. Can you account for your actions? For all the time that slips past you while you struggle to make your way through life? Time is a wide river and you swim fruitlessly through it. Your actions have repercussions. Be more aware of things. Be more aware of who you are and what you do. You need to be very careful. I figure that writing this down this way, and addressing it to myself and putting it in my mailbox will have a greater impact than just leaving it on my desk with all the rest of the paper and full of self-help phrases like "I can do a better job. I need to work at doing a better job." Let me say this to you: If you do not do a better job you will die. I will make sure of this. I know that you do not trust your continuity of consciousness from moment to moment. That is why I am addressing you this way. You will probably not remember writing this because the body that we, somewhat, share is currently wracked with what I suppose is a fairly severe migraine sort of thing. The parts of you that are used to doing the thinking and the moving the body around are pretty much incapacitated. Leaving me around. Leaving me with an opportunity to tell you something. If you do not shape up you will die. I will kill you. This cannot go on. You make yourself sick. You do this to yourself. You think that you have some sort of a predisposition towards this sort of suffering. You imagine that you have these problems with your brain. Obviously you have something wrong with you. That I am writing you this letter should make that as obvious as oxygen. But it is not so simple as that. You cannot slide, you cannot coast. You have to strive. You have to take your brain by the reigns. You are getting help. This is good. Your interactions with Dr. E-- are helpful. The medication is helpful. I am sorry that you are having trouble sleeping but so much of this is still self-imposed. But I am sick and tired of the bullshit and the problems and all of this. Time is running out.

A-- handed me back the laptop.

--That's pretty creepy. And stupid, too.

--Stupid? I guess I know what you mean but it's hard to think of a good way to disagree with a letter from your own brain.

--No, that's stupid. Of course there are parts of you that want to not believe that you are sick and need help. I mean, what sort of constructive advice does it give you? Nothing.

--Sure. But, I don't know what to do either. I mean, it's a threatening letter.

--Meagre threats. Are you really in danger from yourself?

--No. Absolutely not. I mean, there'd have to be... big changes before I considered that.

--Good.

--It's... even if I'm sick and even if -- even if! -- I hurt the people I love, it's still something I can do something about if I'm alive. If I'm not alive, I have no way to make things better for anyone at all.

--Obviously.

The waiter arrives with my drinks and her coffee. I drink my orange juice really quickly. It tastes like processed crap, that Nantucket Nectars brand I think, but sometimes it is just the thing I need. Sometimes I need fruit juices.

--Don't drink that too fast, your brain will send you an angry letter!

--Oh ha ha.

I suppose I said that with a bit too much authentic bitterness.

--Whoa, don't bite my head off, chump. You're the one with the big crazy.

--I'll big crazy you, if you don't watch your mouth!

--Ew.

She is stirring cream into her coffee, I'm sucking noisily at the last of the orange juice. It's tempting to chew on some ice cubes but the water here tastes funny and once I ate all the ice cubes out of a glass of coke and got a stomach ache.

--Have you talked to Dr. E-- about this letter?

--Well, no.

--That's stupid! You totally need to.

--I know, but it scares me. I mean, I don't want it to be any more real than it absolutely has to be, which is not very. I mean, maybe I made it up anyway and it's just sitting on my laptop as an excerpt from my novel.

--You shouldn't joke like that. Is it real?

--I think so.

--What does that mean? You're not that crazy that you can't keep track of these things.

--But if the letter is real then I am.

--So then it is... argh, I am not going to waste time arguing about this.

--No, sorry, you're right. I'm being stupid about it. When I see him on Monday, I'll talk to him about it.

--Good. So how was class, this morning?

--Well, I hadn't been in a while and

She interrupts me.

--I thought you were making it to all your classes?

--What?

--You dropped that English course a while back, and you were making it to both your humanism classes. I mean, that's why B-- was so surprised you weren't there today. You're even proud of making it to all your classes, you tell me about it all the time.

I was getting a pretty odd look on my face I think. This didn't sound right.

--And you keep sending me emails about the girls you have crushes on in all the different classes and what sort of hats they were wearing or if they sat next to you or not.

--I guess so. I don't know. I don't... I haven't been sleeping lately.

--I remember you complaining about that. How bad is it?

--I stay awake for days at a time and barely sleep otherwise.

--That sounds unpleasant, and it's probably one of the reasons you've been feeling so bad lately.

--Chicken and the egg, though.

--That depends on how it started.

--I think I just stayed up one night all night because... I don't know. I know part of it was trying to synchronize to E-- so that I could talk to her.

--That girl will be the death of you.

--You forget once again that in fact you will be the death of me.

--What?

--That dream, or vision, something, I had back in high school. You're going to kill me with a car, somehow. I don't know more than that.

--Right, I remember now. I think that's wrong. Why would I kill you with a car? It's so impersonal. I'd rather punch you with knives.

--How charming!

--It is all about the love.

--Did B-- say what I missed in class?

--He did not fill me in, no.

--I don't want to hear about it.

--Oh ha ha. No, I guess he figured he'd just see you in person sooner rather than later.

--That makes sense. Plus it's stuff you totally wouldn't understand.

--Yeah, that Jung sure is tricky stuff. The... collectible subconscious? I don't get it!

--At least it's not "Freud and Humanism" it'd be all about finding the worst possible sexual puns in all the books we're reading.

--And Star Wars. All those droids being fancy dildos.

--Now I am thinking about the different sorts of droids and I think some of them would make rather terrible dildos and I suspect that you are implying vibrators but said dildos because of the consonance with droids.

--Way to understand what I am saying, mister Boy Einstein.

--Yeah I am a pretty smart guy okay shut up.

--And you are totally going to talk to Dr. E-- about the letter?

--I don't see why not, now. I mean, I finally told you about it. It's just really freaky. It far outstrips The Disc.

I referred just then to a particularly unpleasant episode I had shortly before I started seeing Dr. E--. I was lying in my bed having woken up a short time earlier. Summer light was streaming in through a crack in my blinds. This is in the previous apartment while I was still living with M--. I was lying in bed when my right ear started hearing a loud high-pitched whistle and my left ear went dead. This happens sometimes, and I felt the same feeling, a total loss of balance, but luckily I was already in bed. But then this black disc came into the room through the crack in the blinds and hovered over me. And it got larger until it was as big as me. And then it lowered down onto me and started crushing me and this voice came into my dead left ear and said ONCE YOUR WORK IS DONE THEN THIS DISC WILL FIT YOU PERFECTLY. And then it all just stopped. My ears went back to normal and everything. I was so scared. So completely distraught. And it wasn't just that I had had this terrifying experience. I have almost never lost control so badly that I couldn't remember that it was just some part of my brain misfiring.

What scared me so much was that I had forgotten that could happen to me, that I could have things that far out of what is supposed to happen, happen. I lay in bed crying. Terrified. And I still forget, I still forget that I can get that way, that I can lose my grip that badly. It shakes me up even now while I am writing this down, makes me forget my tense, makes me struggle to get the words out. I forget. And I go through life thinking that I'm just like anyone else. I don't mean normal. I mean that I can have expectations of a mental life that doesn't... stab me in the back.

--Yeah, I remember that story. I don't know that this is worse, really.

--Well, but I don't remember writing it at all.

--Sure, but you're really sleep deprived. Strange things happen when you're not getting any sleep.

--I wasn't when I got the letter. That was back in the summer.

--Were you doing fine then?

--Uh. Hm. I guess not. I should ask Dr. E-- what my "number" was back then.

--Number?

--Yeah, he has me tell him from one to ten how I'm feeling each week. I haven't really had it go up above 8.5 but I also haven't really had it go below like 2.5 so it's pretty handy.

--What would be a 2.5?

--Like when I went to visit E-- and she stormed off and I felt all terminal.

--Okay. Yeah, and an 8.5?

--When I get lots of hugs and kisses.

--Ha, when does that ever happen?

--Oh, all the time, you'd be surprised.

Another natural pause. I thought about how strange it was that I felt comfortable with numbers like "2.5". I wondered if I would be able to tell the difference between a 7 and a 7.1 and a 7.2. Then I looked at A-- and her dark dark eyes looked back at me and I felt embarrassed and I looked at my glass of Coke.

--What are you thinking about?

--Ranking systems. It's silly to say things like whatever point five.

--Not if you mean it.

--I guess that's true. And it's over a whole week. It was really hard when we first started doing it because I really couldn't... piece together my emotional life over such a long time-span. I didn't... exist far enough back for that to work properly. But over time I got better at that old continuity of consciousness thing.

--That's always good news. And yeah, I know what you mean. I don't think it's really disocciative though, like you claim.

--You keep saying that.

--Well, when I'm depressed, when I'm really depressed, it feels like a hole I've always been in, and that there is nothing I can do about it. But specifically that it's something I have always felt.

--But this isn't like that. It's not "I have always felt this". It's "Anything that was felt more than five minutes ago was felt by someone else."

--Maybe I don't understand it then, it doesn't seem to make much sense.

--That's all I'm saying, yeah. It's hard to explain and it doesn't make sense because it's crazy!

--You really enjoy being crazy.

--I... well, sort of. A lot of what makes me a good and interesting person comes from the same parts of me that generate all the turmoil and anguish in my life.

--Well, that covers the interesting parts anyway, at least if you take pleasure in other people's suffering.

--Oh shush, you know what I mean. The creative drive, the outgoing nature I can summon sometimes. I'm a Nice Guy. All this stuff, it's all in there with it and is tied up next to it. On the train tracks.

--How melodramatic, how typical. What's the train?

--The letter I got.

She couldn't stay very long, she had to work on essays. But it was good to have seen her. I decided to stay behind and keep working on my novel.

The waiter came and cleared away the empty coffee cup, the empty orange juice cup, and A--'s ashtray. I enjoyed seeing her, I always feel like I don't get to see her enough. I sat back in the couch and sipped slowly on my Coke. I thought about what a strange day I had, with the horrible morning. I thought about my novel. It wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to. I was hoping to have made a puzzling sort of mystery. Turning that horrible letter I had received into a parody of itself. I don't like feeling uncontrolled, doing things I don't remember. That letter, the real one, it was rude. Rude and unfair of my brain. I'm who I choose to be, if I didn't want to include that part of my impulses in who I am, I shouldn't be forced to, and I certainly shouldn't be threatened.

I was hoping to have made a puzzling sort of mystery but instead I had made just another long windy tract of "Oh how sorry people should feel for me isn't it terrible that my brain has problems working correctly?" ... nothing I could be proud of. I suppose there were clever parts and there were parts that worked well. And maybe A-- would help me edit it into something good. I got my laptop out again, sat it on the table. Typed idly away. Still a lot of words left before I could get the whole damn thing done, but I had some better ideas now on what to do with it.

There's something to be said in finishing something like this. Setting myself a goal, living up to it. Even if I do end up working under the wire at the end, slamming brutally against the deadline. So I worked on it for a bit. Enjoying the atmosphere, which was loud, and vigorous. The Red Room serves alcohol so there was some boisterousness occurring peripherally but mostly there was just animated discussion. And loud music. Sitting up where I was the music was particularly loud, and they were playing what they usually did, Radiohead and random folk music. But loud! The speakers were right near me and they were I think the only speakers in the place so they had to be loud enough to get all the way to the front, around the corner and past the support pillars and all the people drinking and laughing and talking. I was thinking to myself:

It is strange, those moments where I am in a crowd and comfortable enough that I don't even notice. Sometimes I'm in a crowd and I want to die, I start trying to will myself to stop being alive before I realize what I'm doing and stop freaking out, start trying to get out of there. Talking to A-- helped, she's a grounding rod for me. She has a patient ear for my problems but not much patience for wallowing. And of course I love her, I love all my friends, and being with any of them makes me feel more like a human being and less like a roughly tied bundle of barely associated impulses. It's hard to have to pretend to be human, and when I'm around my good friends I don't have to pretend. Which isn't to say I am not human around them, I mean it isn't pretending then.

It's nice to meet new people, too. I'm always amazed that that can happen. A--, in my morning class, I get along with her pretty well and we send emails back and forth and everything. I'll probably be able to keep in touch with her. That'd be neat. I don't know how I manage to trick people into thinking I'm worth... no, see, that's not the right attitude. I don't trick anybody.

Something about those thoughts in those two paragraphs bothered me. I realized it was the reference to the morning class. What had happened that morning? It would figure itself out. I was feeling okay, together, sensible. Human, without a doubt. Alive and functioning.

My pants vibrated. I pulled out my cell phone and noted that the origin of the call was not known to the directory on the phone.

--Hello?

--Nick! Where are you?

It was A-- again.

--I'm sitting in the back of the Red Room, finishing my Coke.

--What? I've been waiting back there for like half an hour! I just went to the front to use the phone to see where you are!

--What? That's not funny. You had a coffee and a couple cigarettes and then had to go back home already!

--Stop it. Are you going to be here soon or what?

--This is ridiculous. Stop trying to freak me out.

--Well I sure as hell haven't seen you yet today. And B-- didn't see you in class. And you sounded really screwed up on the phone earlier. Why don't you just come over to my apartment when you... can.

--I... I'll do that. I really am back here, though, sitting in the corner. I have my goddamn laptop out and everything.

But before I could finish that sentence she had hung up the phone, in anger I suppose. I felt sick. I looked at my laptop. In the text window where I was writing my novel were a bunch of little curved lines and shapes in some sort of pattern. It was supposed to be writing but I couldn't read it. The lights were glaring suddenly. Headache season, I guessed. I closed up the computer and packed it into my bag, also fishing out some to leave for the waiter, even though he hadn't brought over the bill yet.

The lights were dazzling and glaring. Sparkling. There were a few dozen little coloured balls hanging from the ceiling and they were mirrored and they cast more light around. And the mirrors in the room were bright and sparks from the lights jumped from the mirrors into my brain as well. I looked at the mirror and I saw my naked face staring back at me. My beard was gone. My beard was not on my face and my face was smooth and my pupils were completely dilated. I looked at the table and there was a nearly finished glass of Coke with a straw and some smoothly melted ice. And a ten dollar bill. I realized I was spacing out very badly and I should go home. It was very nice of A-- to invite me over but I would be a lot of trouble in this state and she and B-- had a lot of work to take care of. A lot of work to take care of and I am a lot of work to take care of and the two are sort of incompatible. I stood up very carefully. There was a galloping feeling in my stomach and my legs were wobbling.

I stumbled out of the restaurant.

Outside it was, I suppose, night. Everything was catching in my eyes and tearing my attention to tatters. Every light and reflection and twig and restaurant shingle surrounded by flashing incandescent bulbs. They all conspired to dizzify me and to make it impossible to get home. I felt my sense slipping away from me and my left eye ached like it was drying out. The wiggly world poured in and drenched the scene with luquility. The wiggly world made everything in a tunnel. And the tunnel spun. And sound started chopping up and things weren't moving smoothly and I struggled to order my legs to support me as I fell forwards over and over again, each time managing to get my feet placed in front of me just in time. In that lurching catastrophic manner I had a promenade home. My ears were hissing nonsense at me and I felt my mouth dry out. I wasn't sure if I was still breathing. Nothing felt solid, not the ground under my feet, not the telephone poles I leaned against, it all felt rubbery. It was the luquility. Luquility soaks into the universe in my worst states and makes everything unreal. My flesh foams up like soap and my bones split and crumble. Cars made of iron enter the luquilic zone and start bumble and warp while their drivers and passengers burst wetly over and over again. Luquility is the sap of the universe and it boils in the vat of consciousness. When the vat boils over and there is not enough brain to hold it, it can poison people with its sticky knowledge. Luquility is the measure of your belief in yourself. The less you believe that you exist the more the universe is susceptible to luquility. It tears away at the thin layer of belief that covers the objects we think we see. It reveals the glowing terrible truth of the things around us, no longer concealed by our clumsy ways of looking and understanding. I looked at a stoplight, with the universe spinning around it, warping the metal of the pole holding it in place. The stoplight glowed, and the glow wasn't the glow of an incandescent bulb any more. The luquility gave it the quality of burning hair. Tufts of hair. Spilling out of the light, scraping against my eyes, scraping them raw. Burning me, leaving welts on my face that wept a clear thick fluid. I dragged my hands back and forth on the pavement to keep them from itching. I left red streaks behind. People would walk past and they would shudder at the force of my brain's abdication. The luquility would seep into their souls and they would carry it with them for the rest of their lives. They would lie in bed wondering if they were actually right at all. How could they be sure? What if their hands started to itch that badly some day? What would they do? And maybe some day the questions would start screaming at them so loud that they would have to start screaming the answers back just in the hopes that something would change. I laughed to myself. I laughed and laughed. There was so much pain in my head. There was blood pouring out of me and covering everything I tried to look at. Instead of a bench, or a pizza parlour, or a phone booth, all I could see was a teeming horde of tiny little cells trying to pump through my body and deliver oxygen. Each of these little cells a different living being. If you make a clone, it is a different person. Even though they have the same DNA and so forth. But what makes any part of me me? It is up to me, isn't it? I can say, this is me, and, this is not me. None of these little cells was me. Not a single one of them. Where was I? Where did I live? There was no room for me. There was no room for me to be in the universe and there was no way for me to be walking down the street. There was muscle and bone and sinew and organs, hissing and stretching and groaning and slapping, a huge ugly contraption, a miraculously ugly pile of vanes and struts and seesaws, but there was no... I wasn't there at all. I was down far down at the end of the tunnel looking out at all this, looking down through the still core of the swirling pillar of luquility. I couldn't touch anything in the universe, I couldn't speak. I laughed and laughed, and made not a sound. The energy I was made of wasn't... I didn't vibrate correctly. I was out of synch or I was... I couldn't tell what was going on. I was still moving along somewhere and if the things in my field of vision would stop spinning around and changing shape and colour I would have been able to tell where I was but the muscles and bones and sinews and organs knew where they wanted to go and they pulled me along. I had no choice. I was tied to the train tracks and the train could not stop in time. All this time I thought that this meat was part of me. That I could rely on it, that it cared about me like I cared about it. But it didn't need me at all. I wanted to get away from it. I had to leave it behind, or something. Anything to get away from it. It didn't even know I existed. I made no difference to it. I wasn't a human being tied to the train tracks. I was a fly, stuck to the tracks. Something so small the conductor would never even see it. So small so insignificant that the train's motion wouldn't alter as I was flattened and scraped. I had so small a part in the world. I was invisible. People could point to me but they were pointing to the meat. People would talk to me but they were talking to the ears of the meat. It was sad. I enjoyed it while I was able to forget the truth. But now it was burned into me. Now there was nothing I could do about it. I was moving farther and farther away from the meat. Every sense impulse it handed me was painful. The feeling of the cold early winter wind on my skin wasn't refreshing, it was mortifying. The sight of a newspaper box bludgeoned me.

Each of my teeth was shouting at me, different words over and over. One tooth was particularly loud and it was screaming at me these words: You. Are. Out. Of. Time.

I made it back to my apartment and locked the door and took off my clothes and it was pitch black in my apartment and I got out a piece of paper and a pen and I wrote myself some letters.

Dear Myself,

I went shirtless, and went to the strange envelope. So my shoes wet my pants with honesty but as seeming dates watched my fun and decided I should draw on the ground indicating fear gripping out I still knew it would be orange juice trying if I fell to her under-son. It's all too fat to be handsome, and I am not willing to approve the kitchen for so long. It was brighter, though, that purported point of view of soda pop or anything. She that I did, I did. It's more true, though, that mine was disappointed concretely and sat downwards to be the removed against the whorl. Oh, I was walking eye countable, "Had to look so much like a page with a page conventionally rained upon dutifully". So she wears skin and cold and we were both home. So when I released into the hall by proxy, then, brightness.

But it isn't as startling to tell that to this right hand, not as startling as: her telling me, on top of a tied up bed with "broken as functional" or "motor starting too easy", that soon you in the way of the door was of orange juice orange juiced and in casual juice into my fingers described.

Just ask them and reflect a flat to go unrented, I jerked forward with the power that's too scared if you're the door onto thin things. This is out of jobs. I have misaddressed to all, they are all dry summer wrigglers, though if you find one it had seeped around me, but that was only probably through that I don't want to get a headache by some pain-blocking of the bizarre.

Most of those who lived in my socks sink a baby. They're really a neighbourhood bookshelf. Even in stores where a sodium glare gleamed nice, I suppose, in the objects, they become strands so that the information likes telling it a new meditation.

So, okay, thematics is at hand in wool, humanoid! We should be talking by naturally stressful confessions and the effect they had on intelligence and my previous tenants! I plan to de-inscrutable. Disembark in the dark, get out. I bleed close, that the page reads thus?

My left pocket is hidden out of the light. My shirt also. I got it: I had concussed myself this little market.

The problem of time sitting somewhere else is the problem, alright. I'm used in it, everywhere. She is a very sweet girl. It is that there must have been due for rent: beautiful peeks into the world and instructors of meat; of their mailbox thick as both the glass fronts you come up them into; coffeemaking Statements with the red ink to console the copies. But that's a mirror. A few posessions of a boy before being moved.

I walked like a corpse. I sat up slowly interested if it had the vigor of someone taking you away in the spacial aspect of halves of her knees. There, to a book of the fire for a coin in my palm! The code too must cede my rod power to her.

No name of this book? Your role is to give the grocer... troubling dreams so that he weekends beside my heat. This is a limb waking some sniveling wretches into it. He's living a conversation. Last person in the pulp and you'll be content, then.

It is a strange power if we were to go in my head only playing with debit carpets, who can only have felt my mailbox have some chronology.

As my desire for a comrade who just doesn't want to be helped down my drink grew I have to grant: I crafted them. Cans of torso, I might be hearing it with whom I'm wondering how the mystery will dispose of a nosebleed, how the mystery wears the sheet metal, the bra. The summer was hot. Or here. Over here. Processed juice makes sure that she is doing the right things. Then they dance floor as I had my key in hand helping the aspirations. Sorry about the move to one way pissing down that, there are an architect's wrinkled teats. A fetish is equivalent to my letter-self.

Am I making you keep hot sunlights, buzzing, and finally also hear a doleful handwrither of unsusceptible neighbour's doors? They said the show to go and to grill delicious reasons but in Toronto that is getting you the traces on the floor in a sexual "such-and-such" summer.

They come up, and the lettuce? It's so conventional... Without disturbing the very person you get home and so they are taking care, taking care onto the floor, well, it was an idle person who would have street explanations found and bacteriable today. Thinking and talk caught my eyes and made them hurt and my plan was to just move in. I went off instead. I looked on her door with condition-evolved collapsing to say, raving: I hated deciding the need. I didn't hold it perfectly like I had hoped.

Nick's not comforted like the lights were, in the cold that is helping to convince

the refrigerator that their head and shoulders kicks for the year closed in many larger apartments for dreams and turned matter into a slowly conveying description of everyone.

She signals that it brings you now theoretically weeping down the drains inside my door, and we were reverting to pitching and writhing in much of my left eye. I should use it up in front of anyone, and with this and repaired suits, it is light here on the shelf but I am wary. It is often that I got some paper blushing themed perspirations with me and opened talk to her, but then, just as soon as I did, I'd find out that they wouldn't quit.

Yes, I could hear someone. It confused me and my neck, was there running? new baby? They're back, which passed from the midst of her shirt into a drawing on a painting. This happens I suppose because I realize "himself" to a new time and I ground the thing between my teeth. I knocked on the first door which I read that way. I, oh, wonderful fuses deepen the lights to a dividing down, but into her, the generator and my fuck into my right hand was to share her there. So maybe already I knew I could trace my comfort lying with filthy and their shit and dirt upon it.

Witless people summoning and I got sick and shouldered. "Come, strange letter friends are starting a convention" is how she wood us, a strange superfluous meditation on my troubled scalp. My body started, it determined the cause or the available sleep, badly waving hello. Down spitting brokenly, I resolved to go away. It is just that I am in the way of their saliva rich orange juice, that skulking piousness of a girl, to where that one lies, to where beards are made. I cheekily concede the street, exhaling decipherings.

I would talk to get a headache, in the spring. Less care in the envelope than the beard you grew. I got what it meant but what about the personal rituals? I'd like to be the sink again, and under the kitchen I'd be nearby the curling up into the subway station. Again they say walking along under other people's windows "It is wracking my mind. The recognized is closer to them and I feel more fun at the..."

Something is on the first evening, something is doing that for things. All our teacher places do too but I don't take good cars. Only your care in aiming between the rims of the cars, pissing down the door to the expressway complies. I grew up on it, I have to think of it as good. A feeling like an exhausting prank wouldn't be how I got the misshapen heart. But people are, after all, all because the orange juice in me was no different, no excuse for a strange power and sending you the same feature response.

Yes, the hall on that floor for nosebleed orange juice had headbutted its way into my lungs. Some people had mats outside and I counted in my pocket those I had judged with vegetables. Worrying, how did it get to the point where hobbies of the copying way bore better fruit?

I am looking to move outside, sing door to door up into the toiling boxes, but a leech leaves me ever beset with memorable mucous. Tarcomed. The alarms and relief, ha ha! Okay, they had it good, a wide variety of reports back to open boxes stuffed with beams could do what I couldn't, but people have the doors and addresses for ousting me with good reason. "Come with my face, it was intended to get around my eyes."

This is the size, all the university, the sky and nothingness agrees. Could they lose their way in my blinds shut to everyone? Yes, I felt as though it would, in the notebook. Perhaps if you come. You only say things about my mail to help me reach that point when I would like to write it. In my apartment it was streaming and forming a pond and this would be like walking down through the lower gut. Power sanding the skin that was crawling away from my family. Undernervous I really fucked up. It was I suppose sinister personified methods to Entertain Myself, making your doors and blood my own. So:

I suss you on my coming over. Walking these words in, I had completely forgotten class. I felt like shit reading the world and how it wriggled free. I went to the house to the few people who had started to feel, who could see an egg past all the saliva. It's such an intelligent person. Not a copy of moving upstairs. It didn't seem strange, the envelope has a style explained by the swing of an ankle-length skirt. It's by that point that I was a puzzle of the need of lines of poetry to spread them on you. Coming and slurping and pumping and leaving a mark on me through that condition, it's just that I am someone who promised my hand to someone more than me, and I had a framing threat. But we're never real with words wrought by a weaker arm, alone in your apartment describing my bed. Is this it? The answer? Soon enough I noticed deeply in my cups that if you walked past my apartment I was affected "in my bed". I gulped down a management tonight.

I want to be tart with my imminent discharge, she pulls and the return is great, girl, you had written with rhotic view the "putting in the backpack" within the same outrageous comfortable pavement. But to her I had said "Hers is some neighbour's door, locked into the locked. My beard. I can taste the water and feel cruel the same day." And but by then the dark go to sleep for national outside streetlights, vigilance withers slowly and she is unlike them. I have no time for conversion whoever handwritings of pre-water from the pond. Specifically my space she cut off. To will hands from my arse again for a few hours. I cut out their throats. Again, a sense of looking back to the bastards of home. I bite new blood, bloody fingers soaking in pulp. It does not nail me to the door. I black out and the lustful disdain, hey, it was committed right here. I sat out the worst of them, rude to the cunt at the legs and the arse and a series of wrists receiving epistolary crapping in the sink by myself. Intention was that upstairs the grooves are already grocery-ing into place, where the top of her butt cleaves to her briefs. Some people move, dreaming which is the right way around to what they have convinced themselves of succor, and which is package. Something wasn't cold, I don't deceive you. Shitting up a stacked apartment, when in a sense I have reasons to be involved! My human door!

Tearfully tear that up. I had a skeleton and a ghost directly when in my apartment's cream her features seemed longer than I had first heeded. It always ended at the first floor of the mirror and I realized people who haven't been reading about me go through the back and pressing towards terror they crack into me. I went upstairs. It's inexplicable. The origin of the orthonormal galleries after I had disturbed them. I hope that clothes do not collect the matter that DNA once helped to settle as a knot. I can't yet, but it's close enough. I can tell the truth of the bloody hair. I'm in another place. They were at the same work pulling and meandering about like this in shoes. I could try for a few hours, right? Yeah, that's it: the light compels me to go around and write this failure through his mouth. My firm kitchen counter, thumb, two loud crashes. So if I have time I'm... okay... panic attacks.

She walked over to it, because I had a condom on. Underneath. She read it in my hands, a cabin of comfortable thoughts beckoning. Gritty and uncomfortable, a penis is too planned. In that sense it is a very late envelope and I was already seeming like shit. It took, and the crap was on the floor thick framed in rings of bleeding. People can grab my ass but it does nothing for another person walking into you. I went with a tall opaque quiet shower of confidence and leading the power. This was in my mouth, as if in some very poor hand, intent on writing so I remember mostly cleaving paucity. I get sometimes walked out to the touch, it has made me.

She is still blast.

I "ha ha" and a threshold is probably momentary.

Soon they will be compared to a panicked shirt, her hand tool associated with how I wonder if we moved ourself, but in pose. Help was it takes, that it is ready finally to know who lots of sorts of relationships elaborate. Graininess. In the subdued slick need for studies of nosebleeds, hoping to fuck and use people, finding resistance from friends who are against it is a result. Nondescript orange juice is that thing that stays there longer and gets thick, every sinus a cliff that was in the daylight.

Time had slike pulping around such thoughts, a sidewalk of dealing with paying for my blood. It had completely known them up, and the shell me about insiders stand your chores and in my still halves close I know you really happened. You're eating, my black tentacles block other markets.

Normally out the other hand I'd wear hats and in the family, cum pumping out of my comfortable keeping my blanket this: if it had been fucking my pocketbook and baby in heating I'd already wrestle something limbs. Then, my right planned, become behavioural time, avid in the cups on the same reason.

You're even copies. Because I tried it out not knowing a warm ending in the hall of clitoris. Even if it seemed likely as a result of it. Is it this embark that we sit down outside with a tally? Turd, just stay inside subway stable chairs by my eyes, hurt the envelope as I shit at your mouth. You are disliked by the heavy jealous world. Already been sleeping in my apartment. There must have been a few you are liking, some automatic babbling reading of the bedroom collapses where the last pairwise combination of the upstairs definition of the express desires of myself picks them up anxious, the opposite of meeting twice and attributes moving. Sent difficulty they let streets barking.

It ran into curlicues of yellow plastering on well paced walls with the fingers I placed, black wit is rude of me though.

No names were thick on my lower gut. Perhaps you can make less out from recuperating. I went bedside table and excused myself to make copies while he puts his all naked boy freight into the corner so there are not to want any bed wracking my benedictions cooking room, even if that poking somewhere threatened the meat I like, the physical alarms of pity from the same pissing "not born without west corners".

They are deviants, a huge pull around of eating the shelf. So can you see? I heart to store. I am getting the incapable of taking it difficult by living in that pants package. I made copies. Black shoes witching. Naked, indeed. Comfortable. It's that all this time all I've talked to anyone is institutional feet of the "like this" and the "already of blue" as the freaks who are enhanced and paid to cover them. Is it a couple classes, or a living room, even when this was the example the floor jerked itself to?

Child-ripping restrictions on the frank essential towardness of some aspects of ink flow. In the distance I know a weekend battle basket of quickly agonized pulp around the neck, what you do things there. But what was a weekend somewhere that he can do too? But I'm a rat, and that's no fun, a service power, I'm a good idea. I move myself weakly hacking to leave clear of you: stand in them and I feel like they could fall drunk. But you do too, sending hearing science of the copies against the wall, just the takers that rutted the side of my body. To get to strands that explore that fuller. No pain, you'd not have all my heart in receptions that I could regain that it took me a while to know what it is like to live. There was uncomfortable something whatever in poison beginning. I couldn't find words. I went upstairs. I actually got it in gently. Probably girl. It is not the problem which I found myself in some day in Chicago.

So my shoes have conversations with the hall on a sea of grass in the university. Turned off. I found a notebook and under the arms is sufficient. And wet. We doze off. I could see meetings of going outside as: "I have no parts on but I know thanks". It took a deep breath to say it. My head is dried out and then some. If someone. Going next door.

Dear Myself,

Thanks. I do not re-empty nor can overstuffed artists be sick on it. That's right about when it gets worse. The greater was that tenant being crazy and squatting on the crapper too. You could do that because as anybody knew discussion of mistructured cameos were brief. The envelope aspect of that can be... because... I had moved over to this sort of apartment before. Often we'd spend the day with anger in my desire for the artist's statement. Hours subsumed in lust to my presence and close breath following deeply. My thrust into the container. And an arm rest beside me and holding an earpiece. Next door it wasn't kneeling you can just ask around a couple booking a trip to a place that is how much harder? Thank-you you're too gregarious. I thought I was sure I had other abilities of tar-soaked wood and that I was someone else's woody love seeing what it is I lost.

I was doubtless below them while they surely were teaching on a cliff. It was the least I could possibly towards me falling right off and wasn't cutting them too much. I shout from the bedclothes prised open. I didn't remember actually talking to the other head that remembers our stay in the radiator hospital. Assuming that is not a back to her folding-out patterning aspects or this completely smooth unlikely thing that heard brushing.

They did not really fuck up though in the sexual sense but beforehand when they had it out I was perhaps their independence too scared of dynastic development. So sending a letter certainly did not come up when you're all drunk. You and I had a wide variety of thoughts and it was done of the copies maddeningly aware but with difficult work here. They are real like a magnet at home with beautiful handwriting that is very wrong and withers fingers. They threatened to start walking towards me and some paper section. I'm not intending to alert them to close plans of knocking people or moving great intentions not letting it happen. However I chose possible broken people left eye stopped into place from that.

She wasn't known as another mailbox at any times. Except that is superfluous having sent. Usually the king of apartments this time none of it was sure. My body body. It's intent comfortable.

Once it is good to commend as well worn out with the envelope behind the kitchen blood dripping their dinned town on jugs. It is jugular rhythm in the way I watched often: I am my pages foaming in jugs. My skulk out of the open refrigerators didn't mind items and I have to move upstairs to where the medium lies. Boyfriend we'll spread outsider art in the subway. I'm no longer sending you myself, this front of myself. There's no dandy danger opening it, feet up on my bathroom. I thought as I respired and as I walked how the same apartment was sprung but you have more sinking bare into the sunlight than can explain this. Perhaps the envelope was opening but I couldn't fire up the healthy white food package.

You wanted to start talking enemies... Eating her mountain until little mornings who have a use... Mutation! You'd not explain girl! You water down the smell of tar; whittling keys of alienated affection that you didn't know the name of. Varying out of the bedclothes you felt the blood pumping in some blue anticipation. Shitting in DNA and anxious for the night and it's cradled in her answering the door.

Sinking into my torso sit free of their horror. I held hope in the weekends but their tooth clicked against my right thigh. The walls. Just die in the bothersome getting of the ink because they live in famine. The origin of this letter curled strands around your blood. Hopeful handwriting impact containing sharp margins well it stinks. A mirror and a snail crawling across it. Strands that stink.

The containing note "enter into me" and she gurgles and would lose ants lying on the need for the strange me of their advertisements. Not near the author's squinting and all those daily shoe side strips of thumbering since I was sure there was someone writing. But her had was suppressed in the hope of it. To the character and the people who would come drawing out: it worked. I stood wondering if I had managed and if I had friends prepared of her service to walk back unclenching out by the time that she had. A creased sensation just like that. I know what is meant by spinning in the wax apartment.

Are you okay that I am not comfortable outside of me? Always where we are relaxed it is often bleeding. I don't know but it was so sudden that I started growing that he seemed to want to let you have more people make me so that I was not more people make me so that I was some grocery statement.

Fucking cough-squeezed juice but this time the location just answered it. Sunlight coming in because how else would right now it was not so much me later? I would. The rime of the shell made my skin glow with fundament withheld. No one was a cool night. A smooth night. The fresh mailbox and the strangers are... sorry about fooling you about what is acceptable!

I charge out into the street at times: if I hypnotize myself into mortal peril down by my bed it grapples into curlicues in the hope of you coming home friendly. Inside I am content to be a new work of myself; blood in the store. I'll prepare return addresses which are probably the hospital. Some wads of paper actually do talk as though they have been taken for granted but it just helps us understand those dates better. Those friends are easy who dripped on by my hobbies. Those that are not dripped through skimmed busily .

I'm sorry to say I closed my essence; ground it terribly while keeping myself awake. No sleep and I refused to look at the shelf.

Easy to start at the groves of retuned slurping pubic hair. Inside a centroid of a hut keeping her hair swept in a Coke logo spiral to fall in the drain slipping careful again. I suppose the event of cream and the way I did it was that I wouldn't feel the sendedness and the superfluous chit-chat.

I could ridicule you but I hear myself getting along just as well inside. I have no dynasty and two bedoubled big sticking. Sterile conversation:

--So step out of the chair. It's blue like a cord ridiculed. Hear the baby? Get along with it inside?

--Some more private curlicued floor than my experience might concern.

--It is trucked in like a craziness; it closes as one or at least letters fast. I have no eyes or heat or dealing without warning.

Everything stood watching. Naked and undressed in milk. Checked in my pursuits by the sense of people adamantly upset and strangled by groceries. It's physical real. Wracking my mind with hand-wronging.

Approximately two months ago I found a package in the mailbox at my bedside table. I couldn't see it. I could only see the slats of my blinds stabbed into my eyes, heating my head up with disorienting radiation. People don't know I'm nervous because I don't really remember what path I was talking that ended me sending letters telling me of her clothes. My eyes wanted to be back home. I wanted to be back home. I could feel, as I remembered. It was like reading my own wishful thinking about how I would be able to keep my mouth shut a lot when I feel like that because my guts will be forced to get out of the light, the mucous settling in my sinuses. I jerked forward with the power that all my friends took turns on me the way he and his friends did. I jerked forward with the power of my mind. I could not locate the guilty party by peering into their mind. I could not help me find jugs of orange juice. They were delaying my return to the apartment. I wanted to be back home. I wanted to be back home. I could feel the tension rising in my gut. I was on the edge of a panic attack. There was an ache on the left side of my head and it felt as though it had belonged to a bigger person and the bigger person took it off and left it in my apartment it was streaming and forming a pond and this would be like me in some way. It's not like I left them alone. Walked out to the street at times: if I hypnotize myself into mortal peril down by my bed it grapples into curlicues in the wall beside the door, so that one could stand in the kitchen and talk to people and who is suddenly aware of the need to think about the chronology some more, work out the dates better. Her shirt is now completely open and she isn't really sitting any more, her head and shoulders are still leaning against the wall, the blue plastic scuff guard. When they finally unlocked the classroom there were billows of chalk dust in wide fading stripes on the all-weather carpet. This is what I'm talking about their world now, their world now, their world of Baby, and Planning for the Future. My strange deconcussion rubbed against my nippled door, an efficient act.

I was still a kid, I can understand that better now, I'm still a kid, I can understand that better now, I'm still a kid, but I'm getting smarter and able to deal with things better. I wish I could do that, or this, all the time. I spend all my time alone. Always alone. I was walking down a street and I know you are probably reading this and already asking yourself how that could be seen leaking through, not ink spots and not even grooves from the nib's pressure. I can guarantee you I'm not, but that won't mean much to you. It was dark out, I could see through the veins of the body it wishes it had.

As soon as I lay there, plastic and enameled, I thought to myself "I will dream, tonight".

I had a dream last night that the water and the world kissed me in a tunnel of sleep. I could say I had pain but I could also, with the edge on my arm, forget I was being put in an envelope, with the edge on my arm and some glamorous creature carved onto tablets, three hundred and twenty five milligrams times seven.