Not sure if I'm writing a letter which will be sent to only a few specific individuals, or if I am writing a group letter posted online for all, or a journal entry to be seen only by a Future-Me if/when that occasion arrives during the window which is this computer's life...


Perhaps I am writing nothing but the most recent in a series of baffling and disturbing messages I leave behind for whatever they may become in the lives of folks I will never come to know?


I am sure that if I do not write this —[ and ]write it RIGHT NOW— there is a possibility (large enough for me to call it "a death defying possibility") ...a possibility I will never write another thing for the rest of my life. Let that sink in: Yes, I meant to say "never" and "for the rest of my life" (keeping in mind that both of those terms are entirely relative measurements, and that anybody that chooses either one of them had better keep that fact firmly attached to the brim of his hat before he opens his mouth).


I am writing these words with the desperation of a dying man squeezing the blood out of the hand of the nurse beside the bed through the night. I have told myself that writing these words will keep me alive one more day. I have told myself that if I can wrap my mind around that as "fact" I will have made it so, and then I will be able to see my way through this day. I can already tell I am starting to believe myself.


(What is this heavy reliance on safety pins?)




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There is not much likelihood I will settle upon any modus operandi in the writing of this, or even that I will finish. In Taoism there is a concept known as "the uncarved block" and, in terms of what I need to write about today, I had already realized that was the only possible posture to take if I hoped to capture the more essential aspects of my intention in words... I had already made that particular assessment and known it to be Truth (in a mystical sense, "already Realized" it) before my computer could be plugged in. (The "unfinished" nature of what I am beginning on this page is its eternal character and so [ , ] in addition to what I want to say to you[ , ] there exists a whole library of detail I will never apprehend [ , ] much less share with The Beloved.)


This has to be all stream-of-consciousness. It may turn out to be quite long.
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Ed. note : A poem, The Beloved , was originally drafted in this space. It has been edited and uploaded to SPR separately. To read its final form right now, in a pop-up window, click this kiss .

To read the original draft of The Beloved at The Camel's Back (TCB) blog, in this window , click the head-banger link given in the footer of this SPR page.

(Any non-Ort can be found in the universal menu at SPR [Poetry icon] as well as in the sub-menu of that title's epoch in the Complete Works series and linked by date in SPR Timeline & First Copyrights , which can be accessed from any SPR footer.)

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I may return to that last mysterious statement. In a perfect world I would. This is not a perfect world, and so I may not . A few days ago I would have —as I would have at any other time in my life— would have passionately hoped that I would, long before I found my way to doing so in my love for you.


Today I will not do that, today I can not hope. Maybe I will hope again at some future time? (The part of me inextricably connected with humor —and many, many other things as well— makes light of that remark cataloguing decades of equally grim pronouncements that appear to others to have almost immediately disintegrated invisibly, leaving behind bounteous evidence of their importunity. The opposed part of me next offers up a single fact which blazes so hotly The Joker actually leaps out of his slippers on his way past the maitre 'd.)


Today I cannot hope beyond the strength to write this letter, this whatever- it- will- become. My reasons for writing it have to do with what I need at this moment in order to arrive at the next one, unfortunately have nothing to do with you[ rs ]. (Where those [ two intersect ], you and I meet. Where they disengage, I am gone.)


Whatever my ineffable reasons (over and above the ones I will manage to describe), they will not be the ones you think they are.




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I don't know very much today. Felt it all slipping away across the past...


...Well, let's just say it was definitely more than a couple of days in duration. Because a whole lot more was on its way in, I didn't really think about all the stuff on its way out beyond wondering where it thought it was going, and how rude to just walk out without a tipping of the hat, much less a lucid goodbye. No, I was most of that whole time devoted to the observation of All Things New. (And as a result, even a lot more exertion ended up channeled into the Divine Dance. If you think about it in simple terms, I was mostly busy keeping myself too exhausted to realize what had to be coming.)


I do know one thing so certainly that it might as well be my name. (Except I haven't yet come up with a word for it. Not even a phrase, so we just as soon brush that little remark aside and allow ourselves to view it as one more line of type from "that idiot rabbit who thinks she has something to talk about". Whether we do or not —brush it aside right now— it's sure to be the topic of what I say here, even if I don't realize it at the time.)
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I am propped up in a strange bed in some motel we fell into late last night. Can't stay here, we don't have that kind of money: Last night we learned another of those hidden rules in The Castle. It was quite a shock to learn, actually. (I mean, living your whole life in complete ignorance of what must be ingrained in millions of other people? "The world as they know [ it. ]") It goes something like this, this particular Castle edict:


The genuinely poor are never allowed to travel with any companion who is not human. (Having myself always traveled with a non-human family member, and having never before been both "in this position" and "genuinely poor" at the same time ...well you can imagine my shock and disgust?) At any rate, that was how we came many fruitless hours later to be ensconced in an establish[ m ]ent wholly inappropriate [ to ] our present situation, if reassuringly familiar in other respects. It was too late at night by then for "stuff" to be taken seriously by a family of leprecha[ u ]ns in distress.


Besides, we have to go back for one more semi-ordeal. Lots of stuff to move yet, and worst of all one entire carton of my lifework (1/3, if I remember accurately) vanished between the time the movers loaded up and when we went back in to put the really precious stuff into the car. I guess we will start today by ransacking the storage facility packed yesterday. (There is no place else left for that box to have gone, in this dimension at any rate.)


Next time we leave will be the last time. (I may have lost the ability to write at all by that time tonight? Maybe whatever is lost will be temporary? Sugarpie's Big Adventure.)




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I have not had much sleep, tho I will tell you I was very glad to discover I was still incarnate when I woke up [ , ] in order to begin typing this. Surprised. Last night was the beginning of the worst, most dreadful, internal ordeal I have ever undergone and, lemme tell ya cuz Bertha knows it, I've already survived some wars that generally wipe out entire solar systems.


Now why I was "glad" is a total mystery to me [ , ] after-the-fact. Last night I was besieged with pains and torments the likes of which I thought I'd never live long enough to see, much less invite into my own house. There are levels to this business of "integration" all humans undergo until we finally either end up Entire or else get recycled for another try at it from some different angle. Of course, I guess it really does all depend upon what it is you are required to integrate at any particular pass through the chute, doesn't it? In my case, it's never been a simple thing to "integrate" who I am, what I do, why I bother, Misery, and all the rest of that odd facet with things like "womanhood", The World, Beauty, (the corrosive effects of Beauty upon everything else in its vicinity), reproductive urges, recreational opportunities for temporary relief (including, at times, varying doses of that wonder drug Amnesia), annihilating loneliness, wonder, and having to get up at five o'clock in the morning.


But there is no question that The Moment has now landed, and in landing it is not in the least tempted toward gentility. It is not going to be kind, has no intention of Mercy. It (The Moment) has gone out of its way to be sure I know, and that I know it knows that I do, that I have only two choices to make (one, really, but that will become implicit in my explanation to you, if I get that far), and that if I fart around or even pretend TO YOU that I have other choices to make —or could make them if they existed— I will have in the process made the One Choice no human being should ever be asked to make, much less actually endeavor to make.


And I am not being asked. I am told that my entire life was the "asking", now I am to carry it out. Apparently, I already answered the asking more than enough times that my decision is... er, "was"... rendered "final", and any argument I could hope to prepare now is to be considered evidence that I am determined to lapse into falsity.


Well, nobody wants to "lapse into falsity", do we?


Part of this (I am being told a lot, so maybe that is some kind of Mercy in itself? Or sadism. Only time will tell)... Part of this is that I am to NOT-DEMAND INSTRUCTIONS. I am to do this thing on the fly, netless, no Primer to even get any idea of the alphabet in use, forget about syntax. I am to just DO IT.


And that, of course, means that in very short order I am to either attempt something unfair to ask of anybody (and therefore sadistic) or else succeed in stripping away every identifiable element in my human identity, rather immediately (and violently), leaving in place of course only enough superficially identifiable "elements" so as to even make "Future" in this context possible. "This context", as I am given to understand, being code for "The Human Condition".


(Don't you just LONG for somebody like Shakespeare to show up and spew some kind of immortal joke that can skewer the whole thing, so the rest of us can safely stop wondering about it?)


I do not know if I will survive. But love like this cannot be denied, and I will do as I am told. The only reassurance I can find (as the requisite self-loathing grows and expands and consumes more and more of Me before I can even get this written down), the ONLY reassurance I can find is that in Utter Failure there will reside Total Ignorance.


That's something to hang onto.


And now, tho I am at this point still LIGHTYEARS from writing down what I really believe I must (if I am to have any chance at success in this horrible and inevitable task before me, I must use WRITING to remain grounded in this place and in this time), I discover I have been allowed (so far, at least) to hang onto that finely attuned sense of "The Beloved Needs...", and realize I have to stop now, post this much ("yes, do not bother with individuals, just throw it into the air and I will guide it home"), and then return to continue what I had wanted to write down for my OWN survival, if I can.


(Yes, I will assuage that sudden pang, as best I know how, then I will return to Me.)


At least I can leave you with something beyond silence, and my deepest intention to never leave you?