The What (you want to know), Part 1

It's time I wrote a letter to you, Eddie.

There aren't any valid excuses for this kind of negligence, except I keep thinking of your last message certain you were being followed. Such a long delay should be prudent on my part, I think (at least from your perspective) but, seeing as I have now started writing this, it's probably also worth pointing out that precaution has never really suited either of us, has it?


You have no way to know this, but your message wasn't delivered here until yesterday. That delay seems to have taken care of last year's warning, since we both know I've historically proved a total idiot when Common Sense is required. (Daddy used to say it was sacrificed when that other part of my brain began to take up so much space.)


Besides, I think we both know my Friends aren't ever going to leave this compound. Not all of them, Eddie. You're right that most will fall back asleep or just lose interest when they realize none of this can end up in reality show prizes and consummate reminiscences for Letterman. —Pretty well takes care of the dreamers and the fame-mongers. Even most of the genuinely sincere will leave once they run head-on into that dragon who dogs my driveway. (But you already figured out how to deal with him, didn't you? I can never forget how back in The Day you tricked his grandfather into charging off the cliff at the end of the cul-de-sac!)


I keep hearing that tune you wrote —Bobcat and Bloodhound isn't it?— and every time it sounds like right now. (What was on your mind, I wonder?) That one relates to what I'm saying today, and you'll remember: Your bitterness at the scent of his need for battle? That's the one.


He will never leave, Eddie. He can't, any more than I can, and you know that's true. Don't you see if he'd had any choice, you and I wouldn't need to write letters at this late date? Even if time comes he thinks he's finally gone —which I seriously doubt— he'll still be right here spraying down my carpet, to the very end. Fearsome stink is protecting me: He's making sure no Sleeping Murderous Fool is going to cross that line, not again. And regardless whether or not he ever decides to come on in himself —if I'm still at home by then, which is looking more doubtful by the day— I absolutely refuse to passively submit to such Lack Of Imagination. In that event, as I am sure you would expect, I promise the most heartbreaking struggle possible (given that there is no one in my vicinity to provide leverage).


He won't hurt you —he knows what that would do to me, and he loves me much more than you can yet possibly realize. Besides, he needs you too, and some day both of you will be ready to believe that. (Looks like we're the only three left who know how to charm invisible reptiles into acts of self-combustion. —Have you been able to find out if more of our littermates are still alive?)










Eddie, I cannot begin to tell you how moved I was to read you saw exactly what happened that year, understood why it almost killed me. I didn't even realize that, myself, until last month —ironically, before your commiseration finally arrived. Back then, I was instinctively turning away from what sure looked like Superficiality-In-Consecration, and had no idea the sort of hit I had already taken. The whole thing was over so fast. Now I see how it unfolded:


What did me in was my conviction I'd undeniably encountered the S-word there . And what a conflicted conviction it was, given that by then I'd long since swooned at least three times —poised, as I found myself, on the very brink of infatuation— and that, in my typically incorrigible rush to respond, I had already published a revealing piece of my own. I was, in a phrase, as vulnerable as a wet hatchling. The magnitude of my horror was so unimaginable that even now it is difficult for me to describe it to you here: Me, truly incapable of only that one Unimaginable. Yet there it was, in the alley like a cruise missle round a blind corner, armed and aimed at one insignificant delivery door.


Was there any point in Planet Earth, any purpose at all left for a living breathing doodle Fashioned-For a... nuclear... Thing ? And so I'd taken the only path left to such an idiot: I'd focused upon identifying that disguise called Governor Of Hell since, under the circumstances, that is where I believed I absolutely had to be. (Nobody else could have intended my entire being to implode in such a shameful manner.) I got to recognize it pretty good across those years, especially the mask —though, as it turned out, I didn't stick around long enough to try snatching it off. Useful skill, I suppose, if acquiring it is an unspeakable journey supposed to be undertaken down a one-way street.


I think, in fact, it was reading that single part of your letter opened me a whole lot more to understanding why I am being re-configured in precisely the way I am right now. And then to hear you say you never doubted I'd recover! (I read that part over and over, Sir Edward.) You may have been the only one with true faith in the moment, because I sure couldn't see my way back to that kind of cosmic Hedge-Bet —which is what I believed it had to be (til, as I said, last month I suddenly revelated the real reason why*). Nevertheless, scars like those never quite heal. I can say that to you honestly, Eddie, because even today they bleed daily. Total strangers see open wounds if I forget and unbutton my shirt.


That part of your letter also made me realize the extent of what I have yet to tell you, and how very much you will want to read it. For example: What that S-word really was, and how its depths —once I was initiated* into them— are what kicked off this whole metamorphosis. How grasping what that meant —what it had to have required* in the first place— humbled me til I fell, scraping my lips back and forth in loose dirt and weeping for forgiveness when I'd done nothing wrong.










Eddie, you need to understand this is a mutual tutorial in Divinity, and we are a-Musing within it together. No two of us have the same focus to maintain. Each needs every other Player if any is to succeed. (There are so few.) It's something past concerns over identity, religion, culture, even species-extinction —It is a doorway beyond human needs getting met. We are crashing the gates of Eden now, and it's clear to me we can't all survive to tell this tale.


Did you read yet how last May it was Harriman And Friends, Ltd.(*), literally pulled me from the jaws of The Flapping Thing? Barged right up, grabbed on, and pulled til I popped back in. Pried out forgotten earplugs, made me sit on the side of the bed til the CEO recounted all the real* stuff sent my way in the same envelope (tossed aside back when that acid hit my face). He refused to budge til I'd conceived exactly what was done*. Then he told me why*. Eddie, I owe him an unpayable debt, am still staggered by his love for both of you. Then he said there's new music in the wind, and they'd see it on for as long as it takes til we do this thing, handed me keys to his truck.










Thought I'd drop you a line today and start my reply. Your letter was so long, it's sure to take me a while to answer, but I thought I'd better at least begin, even though I don't know if you already gave up and moved away. (If you did, I do hope the new tenant has the decency to return this so I'll know. Ain't it awful how the Time-Space Courier Company gets away with such lousy delivery service? You'd think they'd've gone out of business long ago. I guess it'll take somebody really rich to lodge the kind of complaint that will speed things up. That eliminates me, so who am I to complain?)


I'll write again soon as I can, Eddie. So much outrageous stuff going on here, way too much to tell. And it keeps accelerating. Yesterday one-fourth of my hair turned platinum —left rear quadrant. Looks like somebody painted my head overnight. Inexplicably, it seems I am being marked.


Bertha came over, took one look and yelped, "Your hair is white!"


My son said, "I didn't know hair that already grew out could change color all the way down to the scalp?"


"It can't," (Me to Bart) "I guess this thing's going even more humiliating or public, one or the other. Hope it's not both, tho God knows I've already matriculated that boot camp." (What more could either one of them say?)










I hope you're still counting on me, Eddie? I won't make it without you. It's always been the Tinkerbell Effect holding me here —did you already understand that?— more certainly now than ever before. (Wouldn't take long once the closet clapping stopped.)


No matter what, just don't go.



Sugarpie