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8/12/00 11:34:47 AM

From: "daria" <d@emailaddress.com>
To: "evan" <evan@encephalon.org>
Subject:
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 22:46:40 EDT

so i was sitting here thinking about you, and then i got to thinking about me, so i thought that with all this thinking, most of it about me, but with the original thought about you, i should write to you about my thinking, dedicate it to you in a way, because i think you like my thoughts.

i'm lofting it above the avenue (getting my loft on, i suppose), and there's this saxophone drawling a solo, strangely layered with a tripping bass beat so i know that there's a polyestered dj's electronica booth complicating and compiling different decades together, and that there's not a wrinkled black man puffing his cheeks out anywhere for miles.

intermittently come the screams (cross the street, and the sounds shoot the air at 135 degrees): the child pushing defiant trembles through his chest, like something from a low budget horror flick with a softly-tressed cheerleader; and the church sitters, this man who seems to have swallowed the gears from a '68 chevy, whose throat is being ground into rivets with every explosive french warning, except he won't explode, however much his tight veins want to; he'll be sliced in two at the throat, these spiked nobs boring into his grunting vocal chords. i keep waiting for him to shatter, but his flesh will probably just fall neatly on the church steps, defeated by years of armageddon-grade anger and robbed of the youthful dignity of hosting a visceral supernova (like larkin saving her phlegm in jars in order to form her own diamonds, made from larkinness).

so i'm sitting under a single bare lightbulb, racking to remember a moment, a split second, when life was a certainty, when my heart pounded with the unmatched feeling of having known everything eternally, every organ, bone, and drop of fluid and air. something i can take with me, something that says 'earth'. suddenly i know: linoleum.

the kitchen in connecticut, where, summering at the age of six, i searched for winter and found it only by lying in all my waiting-for-puberty nakedness in the only air-conditioned room in the small mall town, stretching my limbs out across the cold, moist tiles of the floor.

so, to the tune of slamming doors and the incessant knocking of records, i press my cheek against the grey floor near the base of the stove. i feel the building's pulse, though i've lost my own. winter, jazz, and the earth three floors down.

i've always known this. and so have you. remember?

From: "evan" <evan@encephalon.org>
To: "daria" <d@emailaddress.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 05:29:07 GMT

there are times that i feel so together, like i've arrived, like the work i've put forth and the person that i feel i am have met in the ether(net) and merged to form a blinding white light of greatness. during those times the world is a wide and beautiful place and i am able to look down upon it as i would the backyard of my very own home; a place known and loved, a symbol of my security and masculinity, and a place where i am free to nurture or ravage should i choose to do so. during those times i am powerful and free and the most myself that i'm able to be.

there are also times when i wake up with a cold sweat knowing how far away i am, in miles and in thought, from the (only things that matter are) people who make my time on this planet any sort of worthwhile, and i'm only drifting further away; turning inward, eating myself from within. during those times i feel helpless and stupid, bound at the wrists, dizzy with confusion, paranoid. i feel like i'm lacking something that everyone else has, and everyone knows it. i feel like a child at a grownups cocktail party when all of the grownups have ceased paying attention to a little souless cartoon charachter because they are occupied with getting drunk and getting laid and getting on with their lives - then i wonder what i've done wrong, and i attempt to turn to anything to make the pain go away.

somewhere in between is a scared little boy in (not much of) a man's body who knows what he is supposed to do and tries to do it the best he can, who *knows* he is less than and not quite good enough, but who is grateful that he is not as bad as he used to be. he knows things really are going to get better when he tears up trying to relive memories that are not quite whole; he can gather up some courage and some patience when so required. he can also muster up enough honesty to tell himself why and how things are, reassure himself that he is on an equal plane with everyone else, and can come really close to convincing himself that everyone has been where he is now, and that he will look back on this time with fond memory because the way that everything is and everything that is happening right now is going to mold and shape me into the man i will be tomorrow; and i have just enough faith (and yes i am able) to remember to give myself another chance.