8.2.13, 6:33 AM

Good morning, Der.

Yesterday, Becca’s parents, Becca, and I drove six hours to Staunton, VA. I’m writing you from the hotel lobby. We have a four-hour drive ahead of us to Asheville, NC, where we have rented a cabin in the mountains, 20 minutes outside of town. We will stay for a week.

I’ll try to make this short. I need to work on the novel a bit before hitting the road. But I have a process now. It always starts with this email. I should stay true to my process.

In a way, it’s like a marriage. I commit to the process. We live with each other for a long time, causing growth as well as death. Certain characteristics within me and within the process are discarded as we mature. Causing these little deaths is perhaps the most important function of the marriage.

I already have what I need. It is time to shed what I don’t.

During the marriage, the parts of me that have died were incompatible with writing well. I fear that, if I divorce my process, the things that have died will regenerate. I don’t want that. So I will write this daily email.

I have disappeared down the rabbit hole.

I am afraid of my new awareness. Also, I am in love with it.

I am pure instinct. I write what I see.

I fear that, if I abandon my process, I will regain self-consciousness and lose my awareness of self as pure instinct.

One should not be a full human if one wishes to write well.

One day out of my batcave and already I feel my social instincts returning. I do not like it.

Last night I dreamt that I died. That can’t be good. I hitched a ride on a spaceship. The astronaut drove me to a city in the clouds. There was traffic. Heaven was bumper-to-bumper traffic, if it was heaven. My driver weaved in and out of the traffic like a madman. It felt like riding in a tuk-tuk in Saigon. I wasn’t aware that it was my death until I woke up. But, in the dream, I was aware that, if the driver crashed, I would fall through the clouds all the way down to earth.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m not even alive. And if I am, I don’t want to know about it.

I am pure instinct, not self-conscious exactness.

If I didn’t know that the process would be a bridge between two potential lives, then why am I writing this? I’ll tell you why. Because when I write I am pure instinct.

I hope I don’t become too human before tomorrow. I hope I see a bear. I hope it rains all week. I hope it snows. When was the last time it snowed in Asheville in August? Riddle me that, Internet! I hope it’s never winter and always Christmas. I hope I never have to leave the house.

I bought four tins for eight dollars!!! Tins are seven bucks a pop in NYC. I think I like Staunton. I think I’ll buy four more tins. But not until I write. First I must write.

I am pure instinct. My instinct is a fine instinct. I will trust nothing else.

-st