>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: a crawling start
>>Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001

I'm having the type of day where I keep having to touch things to make sure I'm really alive. The line between reality and fantasy is very shimmery right now, as dream images are interposed with my thoughts about the world around me, and I'm looking for roadblocks I dreamed about, sincerely believing they were real. I'm not sure if I know exactly where the real world begins and my imagination ends. I'm not entirely sure that I believe my imagination ever ends. Aside from all that, my day has been slow and boring. I've managed to stay in one piece both physically and mentally, although I've come close to taking a few other people apart. I feel like a champagne bottle in a paint mixer. People do things they normally do, and I find myself with my eyes closed and my fists balled up, trying like hell not to hurt them.

In my existentialism class today, we were talking about a work of Tolstoy's where he uses an allegory to illustrate man's central dilemma in life: the possible (ha) meaninglessness of life in the face of unavoidable death. Everyone was so full of shit trying to interpret this fucking metaphor. I won't get fully into it, but suffice it to say that these people put their "normal person" stamp on a statement that would have otherwise made perfect sense. You get insipid questions like, "Well, if death is coming, then why doesn't he just enjoy all the pleasures he can before he dies?" and THEY MISS THE FUCKING POINT that in the long run, it doesn't matter AT ALL how many fucking pleasures you engage in because you'll be fucking DEAD. Death is a giant eraser that takes almost everything you've ever done and wipes it all out. What's left of you that DOES endure will be subsequently wiped out by time. These people can't open their little skulls wide enough to allow that fact to come in and knock them off their dumb asses and see that there isn't anything to see. I wish the professor wouldn't allow class participation; I wish he would just let us read the thinkers and then tell all the dumbasses what it was about because they can't ever fucking get it. We're drowning in the shallow seas of ignorance, Perdita, and I can't fucking stand it.

I'm going to try not to drink tonight, or at least I’ll try not to drink a lot. I'm probably sweating alcohol at this point, and seeing as how I'm in a relatively stable frame of mind right now, it seems as good a time as any to take a small vacation away from bourbon street. That, and if I'm through that gallon and asking people to buy me more within a week, they’re going to start getting concerned and they may not buy any more for me. That would really suck.

I hope your day at work is going well, and I hope you have a calm evening as well.

I love you.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: a crawling start
>Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001

Belacqua,

I am SO sorry you had to sit through a class with people whose brains were about the size of walnuts (much like most of the people in the world). Studying existentialism should require a fucking test to prove your worthiness before trying to "interpret" it. There's nothing worse than being around people who think they could just talk some sense into the people who GET it, if only they had the opportunity. Yeah, sure you could convince me that life has a point.

This is where I roll my eyes.

At my job at school, we'd get into some discussions about anything from movies to politics. Of course, when the topic of politics came up, I always drifted off into Perdita-land and tuned them out entirely. Occasionally, though, they'd start talking about some more interesting things like the time we all talked about how we want to die. I think it was during one of those discussions that suicide came up and I said something about how I think of suicide as honorable. They were all appalled (the usual reaction to most things I would say), and someone asked if I would consider killing myself. So I told them yes. Then someone asked why the hell I bother going to school if I'm just thinking of killing myself anyway, and the answer was just bluntly, "Well, sitting around doing nothing would get boring after awhile." At that, they all agreed, which was surprising, but they didn't seem to comprehend the whole "I'm just passing time until I die" concept. To them, everything has a point. That's just as foreign a concept to me as my concept was to them. Some people's brains have a limit. Ours don't. That's all there is to it.

And what the FUCK is going on downstairs? Someone is playing music that's so goddamn loud that it's driving me insane, but it's not even the type of pounding bass that's usually annoying. It's some sort of string ensemble that's just blaring away, and, although it sounds like it would be a relatively decent song at a normal volume, right now it seems like the walls are going to come crumbling down at any moment. Shut the FUCK up. What the hell is wrong with people? I hate humanity. I'm ashamed to have to call myself human. It's embarrassing.

As for reality and fantasy being blurred, that's a constant problem for me. I've seen a lot of different interpretations of reality. Hell if I know which reality is real. The only conclusion to be drawn is that none of them matter, so none of them are really real. All I can say with any degree of certainty at this moment is that you are real, I am real, and the rest of the world can go to hell. I have HUGE problems with this reality vs. fantasy thing when I'm writing something I'm calling fiction. Even my life seems like fiction most of the time. I honestly consider myself to be a character living out the drama of some sick and twisted writer's creation.

Speaking of sick and twisted writers, have you ever seen In the Mouth of Madness? If you haven't, you need to see it. I guess you're just gonna have to come back to visit soon so you can watch In the Mouth of Madness and Very Bad Things with me. It just doesn't seem right to see them with sane people.

Well, it's only 3:30, but I'm going home. This is dumb. I've seen one person all day, and he left an hour ago. My boss is out of town, and I don't have any desire to do any more work...uh-oh, suddenly my vision is bouncing again. That's not right. Well, good luck with avoiding the bottle tonight.

I love you.
Perdita