Subj:

I wrote him something about Ramanujan... as well as some other stuff... when I got home. I know I said I stopped writing him. I lied. I mean, I did for a while...

It was... about Ramanujan and... other stuff and... I sent him a link to a video of one of my shows someone posted up... and I asked, well, mused, about whether he even received the e-mail... and he responded:

Subj: The woman who knew infinity

Yes I did get this. I can still call you tomorrow if you want. Let me know in the morning.

J

Letter to Julian 6.23.10

there is a REALLY long list of things i would do, for 97 minutes of time alone with you to watch Word Wars, this really batshit bonkers documentary about tournament Scrabble players.

i would even NotTouch you, if that were part of the bargain, though I really think you oughtta be leaving work at work, not letting it gatecrash people's dreamscapes. besides they need sleep too you know, these rules, yes, they're tough, but we've seen what exhaustion can do to even the best soldiers... they might give out entirely ... they might start playing for the other side. and i actually really love your rules. i love your rules. i love following them, and you should feel smug. you should if there is any sort of to sense to how people feel about themselves you SHOULD feel smug and GOD BLESS YOU and you're sexy when you're smug but these rules, now, now the thought of having to follow them in the following situation, is giving me the beginnings of an anxiety attack, actually, it's actually not pleasant in any way, but beggars can't. so. for 97 minutes just me and just you and a parquet floor, Word Wars and one quilt and one pillow (we would have to share it, touching or not) and 1 gallon stillvasser, 2 carafes german riesling, picnic:

sandwiches-- portuguese rolls with cream cheese and raspberry jam or
toasted pumpernickel w big dill-y chicken cutlets or sesame bagel with smoked salmon and butter and capers or baguette with prosciutto and olive oil and mozz or cheddar cheese toasted with heirloom tomatoes on english muffins, ww., with salt.

pickles, crispy, crunchy, not like trafficlight green or roar-ange in hue... and carrots- no tray of like broccoli/tomato/ashy-baby-carrot/limp-celery-mourning around a reservoir of ejaculate bluecheese/ranch "dip" bullshit, right?

one ton of blueberries

toblerone or pecan pie

Table Top coffee, for aesthetic symmetry, symbolism.

louise. i am hungry.

we can't do all of that in an hour and a half glued to a screen. wait. i need a week of this... 9 days, seven hours maybe?? um, you just keep watching the credits i'm gonna go over there now and :::under breath::: keep sucking on the spout of whatever genie lamp i got me here in the first place........ NO WISHING FOR MORE WISHES, ALADDIN, al-Hamdil Allah! I'm not, I'm not, I'm just amending... I'm... 9 months, 7 Tuesdays??? 97 million minutes? Kill the No Touching Rule?? PLEASE, DJIN!!!

But in all seriousness Julian. Really reallly. Promise me, unless somehow you already have, that you will not watch that movie without me. Please. I know, that means to you, you'll probably never watch it, well, it's not that big of a loss, okay, is my promise to you, it's just a silly stupid movie... and, you can watch pieces of it, like, read about it, whatever else, just please promise me you won't watch the movie start to finish alone or with anybody else, please... I really mean that. And I'm not going to ask you. Because you'll say no, just on principle, and THAT WOULD MAKE ME SO SAD. I CAN'T EVEN STAND IT. I can'tcan'tcan'tICANT. I don't want to be that sad, what would you tell me, beautiful bww about thoughts like that. You would probably say I should be embracing (or well you wouldn't say embracing, necessarily) the present moment and I'm saying, I am. I am. You always bring it back around to that, so I always think about it, and I do it, and I'm seeing all the beautiful moments. My cat is lying on my feet, There's this good song. I played for a bunch of people tonight and I didn't get any kind of nerves or terror. I still felt irritable afterwards, but... and yes, I did, I needed to hear you saying this again, about everything, okayness of things and organic chemistry and defaults and baseline emotions and the need for the correction and I just can't, in honoring the present moment, take my head out of the golden sand of your island for fearing of being washed away by tide into that cold dark luminous but dark ocean that I love but don't want to swim in alone forever, there is no forever, there is no tomorrow, I don't like it when you talk about nevers and impossibilities, how can you tell me things are impossible and to train my focus on Impossible one minute and only Right Now the next?

Warning: Freeway ends in 15 miles.

Don't worry. Game over. If you can't end it, I can end it. The screen really is broken. I'm fucked up, my heart is broken, it really is your fault, it's not your fault, who cares. Who cares. I don't need you, I don't need anyone, I don't have anyone, I have my books and something to type on and pills to take and a plot to fill somewhere in Pennsyltucky.

I was a nice diversion for you-- you helped me, I'm not saying you didn't, I don't want to be hurtful, though I'm your patient and I can't possibly hurt you because I'm just this little rusted wind-up toy that you can fix or fail to fix, or very easily break if you're careless.

You have all the things you want or need to make a full, perfect life, and sometimes that gets boring doesn't it, and isn't it kinda cool to have the weird girl like you and doesn't it kinda remind you how special you are? And you've taken all the necessary precautions to excuse yourself from any liability. You've said very clearly that you don't want her. Kind of anyway. You're not liable. So you can, enjoy each others company, enjoy her adoration, and the stubborn wishes hiding behind recollections of the preceding days.

Now you're saying you have no feeling, except intellectual connection, and it's a blatant contradiction, but you've been very careful with your words, so you ask me to give you specifics, and I'm at a loss.

And today you brought up my expectation, that if there's an attraction, even if it's mutual-- "which it- which... which I don't think is the case here," it must be acted upon, said it's something that we should look at, thus implying that said expectation is, stems from something unhealthy, could be damaging, is unrealistic. And I understand that you are married, and have a family, and have probably felt attracted and connected with other people (though I know, not in this case) before and it has been mutual and though you would never act on it you could both appreciate it for what it was, and see the value and the beauty in just that. You have about twelve personalities after all, I'm sure some of them relate to different people.

But, I am not. And for me, to be, as you say, infatuated, with someone for, what is it now, October November December January February March April and, get in line, May, the better part of a year, is different than a little diversion is for you. And I am not calling our relationship a little diversion, and I know it's not just that to you, and I know that you genuinely care, but on some level, that's what it is. Right?

Though I can appreciate it as that. I can see the value and the beauty in it. I can. It's just that right now, it ISN'T that. To me. Right now. And you know it.

And then you compare my feelings for you, to your feelings for this woman, that you were going to MARRY, that left you for the wrong reasons... Right? It's just a strange comparison to make, in light of the situation. It's just not the comparison, not the comparison that would paint my position into the corner it's in. It's not the comparison about being infatuated, not in love, but infatuated, with someone who never had any interest in you, with whom you ultimately fostered a healthy, platonic, mutually beneficial and beautiful non-physical relationship. THAT would be the appropriate comparison. Wouldn't it. Not the love of your life. That you never spoke to again. Which makes me think that maybe you just wanted to talk about it with someone who would understand. And I'm honored to be that person to you. And maybe I'm just reading way too much into it, but you're casting yourself as the person who left for the wrong reasons. Telling someone about a broken heart is one very good way to secure your place in theirs.

So it makes me think, you want to be here, you want to be here for me, you want to help me, you know I have to get over you, you don't really know how to facilitate that beyond what you've said already, so though you're aware on some level that you're just drawing me in, you can't stop it, and you are just waiting for me to reach my breaking point and leave, and maybe come back, and maybe not, and I'm drawing you in too, but you like it, and you're sick of it, but you like seeing me, and you're just not really doing anything and you are busy and busier and the more stressed you are the more your mind wanders to a ranch in Arizona or a spaceship cruising through the stratosphere, or being a priest like you thought about when you were a little kid. Or all the fantasies and follies you could have fostered (by the way I'm sure your writing would have been really good, if you tried it, somewhere other than your psychology papers) and all the doors you've had to shut as you merged into different lanes, down different highways, speeding here, gridlocked there, too pressed for time and concerned over the squabbling in the backseat to pause and listen to the radio and look out the window and see that the clouds are casting giant glorious shadows over the yellow yellow grass stretched before you heading North, into the mountains, that road stretches endlessly you know, it stretches up latitudes into farms, slopes, Bay area freaks, the Yakima valley, Washington wineries, places where it always rains, places where there's always sun, 22 hours a day in the summer, places made of snow, places so beautiful they'll make you cry before you die freezing, jawdropped forever, marveling at the world God made for us to live in. You can't just take off and head up there now can you.

I can though. And I will. And I'll be on that road alone one of these days, radio on, no one squabbling in the backseat. I'll tell you how it is.

I'll write you all about it.

Love

S

Re:

Wheeeee. Hi beautiful. I almost made it. Without writing you since Friday... Just 10 hours to go.

But there are ghosts in here. Madeline sees them and I feel them. So I have to talk to you. Till they go away. I like seeing your name up there... In my Recipient line. To: To you. It's like a name from Jane Austen. I've told you before? It's unreal and unbelievable like you. Unreal and unbelievable. Somebody's sooooooooooo damn lucky.

I'm a bit intoxicated. I don't want to say too much here. I want to talk to you in person, with all the magic chemicals floating around between us, your blue and white and my red and blue shots of waterflames, watercolors bursting and blending at the midpoint and glowing indigo all over the room. Not in here, in the dark, with these silly ghosts in all the corners, trying to creep me out and capsize my dreams.

My dreams have been mixed and miscommunicated- I'm talking to you on the phone and the world's flying by, poorly edited jumpcuts, from the keys to the door to the road to the glare on the windshield to the bustling street to the hang-up to the wake-up and I'm getting upset and I'm watching myself say things I don't want to say and you hang-up. But they're just stressdreams. They're old-hat. The other dreams are beautiful, going up elevators made of glass, fast, overlooking skylines of the city. Have I said I like the way you dress. Ha.

I spent Saturday night after work tossing and turning for probably eight hours and I thought I hadn't slept but I woke from the dream and it was two in the afternoon. But I bucked up and got myself to work, and stayed there the three hours until I made up my outstanding balance to you and then I went home. Four sixteen.

Hey you know what's funny. It wasn't really four-sixteen. I mean it wasn't really six-six-six. It couldn't possibly be. I think it was six-sixty maybe. 660? It doesn't matter, but it's funny that you said that. You said six sixteen but you can keep the extra dollar... Like it was 666. ;-) Silly. It wasn't really, was it? Imagine.

What else is funny is that Madeline isn't really doing rooster-calls. That's just her voice. She's like Billie Holiday meets Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, with an Italian accent. I'll show you. I showed her those cats talking and she said, Boorrrrrg! ...I left it alone. What can you say to that, you know?

That's it. The ghosts are gone as far as I can tell. Good morning. See you in a few...

<3

Letter to Julian, wee hours Monday morning:

OMG would you ever do one of those charities like make-a-wish? If it weren't for kids, but for like early 20s wannabe artists, and I made a wish to go to viet cafe with you and then take a walk and look up at the nonstars and the cypress trees and then jump in reservoir for a free3ing cold swim so i would have to cling onto you arms around your neck for warmth while everything was lit kind of orange by the summermoon and light pollution and a car drove by playing Til Tuesday and I could bite your neck really really really lightly, sort of hard maybe... it's part of the wish... and then... well in my dream I started running to your car, and I was pointing out the constellations, that I figured out the formula for the stars, and you said if you can visuali3e the distance between them any time you're in room, if you can place the stars on all the objects, then you can manifest anything and you can change the world... and you were standing on the grass and when you moved the grass you were standing on I knelt down on it and the grass was moving it was swishing back and forth in rhythm with the twinkling of the stars, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1, 1, 2-3-1, 1, 1...

And THIS is what I let Julian know:

Short one here!

Just, about tomorrow- I know you were in an awkward spot trying to be sensitive to my feelings and yet needing to say what you have to say and I just want you to know that it's understood. I understand why those feelings are, different, in therapy, and need to be dealt with, and I'm dealing. I'm overit. Heh. I understand why it is a fantasy, not because it's distorted or anything transferred or any of that, but just because it can never happen. So it's a fantasy... all those dreams and all that stuff, fantasy, my narrative about you in my head, that has nothing to do with you, or your life, there are 99 ways in which I know nothing about you. And I understand why you feel that might be beneficial or even essential to therapy, and I respect that and trust it. I don't need to know, I realize it's a fantasy, fantasies are nice, in fantasies people don't hog the bed, or forget to call, or call too much, or need you too much, or put you on a pedestal, or put you down, or pick arguments about nothing that are all about one thing that can never be fixed, or try to sound casual when they ask who just called, or yell at you for talking to someone or for never being there or because it costs too much, or ignore you all night, or hurt you, or hurt themselves, or leave.

But. I don't let them consume me.. or interfere with my life. I don't live in a fantasy. So. I'm present, in reality. K.

Til Tuesday, 12 hours, gonna burn rubber from that school and get there no later than 12 04. 12 07. Yeah, 12 07.