2001-11-12 2:18 p.m.
open letter from the fool on the hill

Another day, another downed plane. Cause unknown (courtesy CNN, as of this moment).

I'm embarrassed and ashamed at my own reactions to the current state of life. I find myself regressing, becoming more childish, wanting to cry, wanting to be taken care of...all the while wanting to cry out, voting for life, trying to figure out how to say/show/explode creativity and hope to whomever's listening.

Dan and I writing...that's one way.

I'm trying not to think of love/sex as another, but with each passing day, I worry about doing the right things for the wrong reasons. I care about S. a lot, more so every day we spent together, and I want to do right by her.

I don't care if I like her because she's the most normal (read: well seated) person I've ever dated. I don't care if she and I take care of each other when we need it, and just zing our way through the rest of the time together, laughing and smiling the whole way.

At the core, when I push all of the nurturing aspects away, the comfort from our new world horror that she's been...I love who she is, who I see when I look at her: a kind soul, someone who'd stand by her friends and family, and fight with tooth and nail for what she believes. I love who she is when she isn't with me, and that, to me, is one great definition.

Hal Hartley claims in his film "Trust" that respect, admiration, and trust equal love. That's another good one, and what I feel for her fits that bill as well.

Every time I've seen two characters in a play/film/novel fall in love in a hurry, to be overwhelmed by emotions they couldn't guess at or prepare for, I've frowned a little and asked, "how exactly did that happen?"

Now I know.

At the core of me, in the dark, alone � and also at work � I want to cry. I want that more than words can convey. It's a pressure behind my eyes and gravity pulling at the pit of my stomach; it's a hunger, and I can't make myself give in and sate it. And not chocolate, sex, or any of my other vices can help that right now.

So here's my fictional mail to you, whoever you are, fair reader:

I hope this email finds you well and in (reasonably) fine spirits. Though we've only met for a drink and a dirty joke in a hotel bar last summer or shot the shit anonymously over a cheeseburger at a diner counter five and a half years ago, I thought I should drop a line and see how you're doing, fish for fresh data rather than reading what's come before in a diary. No fictionsuits, no fantasies.

These days, New York feels like it's on a fault line, ready to split wide open, some great abyss ready to swallow us, and people walk around every day, trying to ignore the obviousness of the city's target status by living the same lives they always have. Our President's a fool, groping his hard-on as he dreams of his three color pages in the history books, and there's nothing we can do to affect or change his course of action short of an assassination or twelve...and I doubt that I'd know the right path to take afterward, even if there is one.

I work down on Wall Street at the moment (data entry temp at a law firm; time and class action suits against asbestos manufacturers wait for no man), and I spend at least half of my day figuring out better strategies than the terrorists are using so I can be a smarter ant than them. If they really are on US soil, they should realize that terrorist actions shouldn't be reserved for big targets, especially if you're out to hurt innocents. It's about terror, not glory time on the TV news. Americans are a surly and cynical bunch; we'll get scared over the first bomb threat or twelve, but until more buildings are leveled or planes downed, those threats will fade into the background noise after a while. We ignore by nature; we gloss over as a coping skill. Douglas Adams put it best when he showed humans hiding from ravenous beasts by wrapping a towel around their heads: out of sight, out of mind.

My brother and I are trying to write ourselves out of this mess, encapsulate ourselves so perfectly (in comic form) as to give people some ideas about where this is going and, hopefully, shake them up. More solid than a sigil, less impressive than an armed insurrection, but there we are. The book should be ready to be illustrated in a few weeks or so. More details later.

The question I pose to you is, how do you process/cope with the events unfolding around us? The urges to regress to childhood, to descend into hallucinatory realms behind my eyelids, to escape in any way possible are overwhelming, maddening, numbing. I'm fighting my own fight, and I'm wondering, are you winning?