WEDNESDAY, 16 AUGUST 2000
“There’s so many things going on at the moment in my life, but how do you express that in an email? There are big things that happen to a person, as in your case, and you simply express them as facts …
What matters is that it’s going well. I wish sometimes we could take a walk on the beach, so I could try to explain my life in a way that would make it easier for you to say, ‘I know what you mean.’
I might take a train this weekend to the other side of the island. Or maybe I’ll stay at home. Maybe I’ll have a date, or maybe not.
I don’t know how to write a normal letter anymore. And I think maybe I want to lose my ability to communicate in a normal, understandable way.
I think I’m getting increasingly alienated from places that are familiar to me, and to some extent that’s how I want it … and not want it.
I always said I was born a normal guy who just wanted the usual things and who would have been satisfied with less. But my life has made other turns and now I’m stuck between the trunk and the bark. I want everything, and I know I may end up with nothing. I’d have to either continue with my life and the highway I’m on, or I’d have to make a turn at some stage and hope it works out.
It may not be too late to say, ‘It’s really all very simple. Just do this and that, and then everything will be as you thought it would be ten years ago.’
I need a beacon, someone to serve as a lighthouse to show the way back to the harbour every time I made my rounds in the storm.
This might look like a cue for someone to drop a point about religion, but that’s not good enough.
I can even choose to delete this text, and to write things about my life that are more understandable and more according to the convention. But you know me better than that. And you always write back!
And to think you only wanted to hear if all was well, and if I was eating regularly …”
~ From an e-mail to a friend
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