I hear in my mind
All of these voices

I hear in my mind
All of these words

I hear in my mind
All of this music

And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart

– Regina Spektor

 

6.18.13, 8:27 AM

Dear Der,

Boy, am I happy to be back at my writing desk!

That said, what a wonderful trip to San Francisco. Don’t you think? I hope so. Who knows? Maybe you didn’t enjoy the trip as much as I did. I’m thinking about our Saturday shenanigans in particular. Or maybe you did.

What was with my hysterical tears on Saturday? Last night I was thinking about what I was thinking right before I started weeping in the eucalyptus forest, and I couldn’t stop giggling. I giggled uncontrollably on and off all night. I woke myself up two or three times giggling in my sleep.

I woke Becca up, too. She was getting annoyed in that cute way of hers. I think she thought I lost it. I did lose it a little! But in a very good way, I hope.

I don’t know how to explain it. I want to wrap my arms around the world and give everyone a great big hug.

“Now, now, Steve. That’s awfully sentimental.”

Yes, that’s true, Responsible Ego Steven, but I don’t want to listen to you anymore. At least not for a while. You get in the way of my joy in spontaneity. I can structure my thoughts and my life using different tactics from those of my myopic sense of self, which you, Responsible Ego Steven, represent.

You’re always telling me, “Behave in this way. Feel guilty about that. Stop what you’re doing there.” And then you say, “Can’t you see the impression you’re making? You look like an ass.”

You’re so lame, Responsible Ego Steven. You’re so hung up. Don’t you know I am beautiful as I am and brimming with life-affirming knowledge?

“But that’s not how others see it. Others see—”

That’s where I cut Responsible Ego Steven off. I tell him, “Not another word.” He’s like a broken record, always falling back on this “What will others think?” line. He’s scared of failure so tries to preempt disappointment by stopping us before we begin.

The few days with you in San Francisco were better for me than I expected. Honestly, before the trip, I was ambivalent at best about taking so many days away from the novel. However, you reminded me to stick my nose right up next to the pistil and stamen, to close my eyes, to inhale deeply, and to see the scent.

You’re strangely calm about certain things. Or I’m just not calm. Ha! Sometimes Responsible Ego Steven gets hung up on the self-conscious prattle that exists in our head. He projects onto everyone a conspiratorial distrust.

“Oh,” says Responsible Ego Steven, “did you hear what that guy just said? He clearly crafted that sentence to contain 27 distinct, hidden meanings, 23 of which were intended to attack us,” i.e. me, the composite of Responsible Ego Steven and the cool, semi-autistic writer, Steve.

As if anyone cares! The paranoid mode of thought is really an adolescent mode of thought. It is the vestige of the childhood illusion that the world revolves around you.

That said, I am convinced that on some level we all believe we are the stars of our very own The Truman Show.

Hehe, what a strange world there is inside my head. But I think it has the potential to produce exceptional prose, so I’ll embrace it.

Do you hear that Responsible Ego Steven? Embrace the strange world of our mind!

To quote Albus Dumbledore, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

And there’s a whole lot of other Harry Potter quotes I could pull out of my ass. But I could quote Kant and TS Eliot, too. And when I want to I will. So there.

The wind blows by. I’m not sure whether it speaks to me personally or if only recently I started to listen. Either way, into my ear, it whispers sweet nothings. So I learn the gossip of the mountains and rivers and forests and plains.

Oddly, the wind never speaks of the ocean. It’s almost conspicuously silent on the subject. I wonder if the wind is in love with the ocean. Wouldn’t that be the scandal of the millennium?

I’m full of empty pomp today.

Did the thought cross my mind that during the trip I simply lost it? Am I no longer in contact with reality? Am I officially insane?

Yeah, it crossed my mind. But then, out loud to nobody, I yelled, “Who the hell cares? I’m going to write!”

Peace and love,

-st

 

 

I adapted the photo idea from the cover of Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita.