The Unveiling

Brother Lee checked his morning email.  He had founded the Virtual Church of the Undecided web page on a whim but found that many people sent him email in which they sought his advice and asked for sources of information as if he were a minister or priest.  He was never sure how to respond. He did not want to give anyone the impression that he was a channel for the voice of ancestors, animals or gods.  However, he discovered that many people wanted one person to be their guide.  From this, he understood the popularity of psychic phone lines but he did not want to take advantage of others so he decided to accept everyone as his adopted family.

“Sweetheart, can you take out the trash before you go?” Karen called from the garage.  “I don’t have time this morning.”

“Sure dear,” Lee yelled back.  “Love you!”

“Love you, too.  Seeya at lunch,” his wife responded, closing the garage door.

Lee looked back at the computer screen.

Brother Lee,
I have enjoyed looking at your web site.  I, too, have wondered what I am doing on this planet and thought your web site had many helpful insights.  I thought I knew a lot about you until I looked at your web site.

Since you’re quite the guru these days, maybe you can help me with a problem.  You see, I’m uncertain what to do.  As you know, I have many varied interests such as cooking, photography, reading (I am particularly enjoying Charles Portis’ books these days), running, believe it or not, sewing – as a means to an end (I made a parsons chair slipcover over the weekend), antique rose gardening, and watching independent/foreign films.

My marriage with Phillip is great.  I am always coming up with design ideas and asking Phillip to implement them.  He has a pottery wheel and an industrial-sized kiln and I am always requesting items for him to make and what color glaze I would like for him to concoct.  Also he will be taking a drawing course at the local museum next month and I have quite a list of items that I would like for him to sketch for me!!! I am glad that Paul is artistic, as well as an engineer!

Phillip is a great guy but how can I tell if a marriage with Phillip will work?  Any ideas would help.  By the way, I look forward to reading your new book and hope that I’m in it!  You know if there’s anything help you need to finish the book, feel free to call me or come by.

Thanks,
Fredirique

Lee reread the email.  What was Fredirique really asking about?  She knew that she was a more secure person than he.  Had he been missing the message all along?  Hadn’t she once told him that she missed him, despite his being married and she having a boyfriend at the time?  But now she is married so she couldn’t be asking Lee about him and her.

Something touched Lee’s left shoulder.  He jumped out of the chair and turned around.  “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

“Honey, are you all right?” Karen asked, puzzled.  “Is something the matter?”

“What? No, no problem.  Just didn’t expect you to be here, that’s all.”

“Oh, okay.  Hey, have you seen my sunglasses?  I can’t find them.”

“No.”

“Well, could you help me find them?”

“Sure,” Lee responded, heading toward the door.

Karen glanced at the computer screen, skimming down the email, and wondered what had made Lee so jumpy.

After Karen left, Lee went back to the computer.  He hesitated, hovering his fingers over the keyboard like the tendrils of a vine searching for the trunk of a tree to grab onto.

Fredirique,
I apologize for blasting your emailbox with my journal entries lately and I’m about to do the same again.  Sending these to you and then copying them to myself is the only way I can ensure that I don’t destroy my computer writing.  I suppose I could start writing these in Microsoft Word and then saving them to disk instead.  Oh well, you’ll have to suffer through one more email today.  Then, I won’t keep bothering you with my mental meanderings.  In the long run, you will be better off not associating with me — my need for a personal space makes me become vicious and cruel when I feel others are getting close.  I guess mainly that’s why I’ve enjoyed talking to you via email.  This way, I have no direct contact with another human.  So what am I saying?  Well, I’m feeling depressed right now, so I’m stoking the internal fires of self-doubt to make me feel better (what a joke!).  If I snap (as I sometimes do when I’m in a mood like this — I believe it’s called the Napoleon complex) and I tell/ask you to fuck off, you’ve been warned, you had the opportunity to say it first!

By the way, I read the first few pages of Fred Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes.”  Right now, it’s not safe for me to gone on any further.  Knowing what I do about our relationship and having just finished Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” I can hardly go on.  I know that sounds foolish but I can’t read that book, study for final exams, deal with Karen, work on my current book and keep my head straight all at the same time. I have my limits.

Talk to you in the future,
Brother Lee

There are times when being by myself is my pain and my cure.  Then again, I can be sitting in the woods crying for help and no one knows it.  In the end, it doesn’t matter because we alone make our own decisions.  There will not be a “deus ex machina” showing up in Act III of my life.  Besides, why should I wait until the end of my life to save me from my past?
This has not been a good week.  Final exams are next week and my wife returned home after being gone so long that I got used to living by myself.  I will not make any rash decisions until after I complete my final exams.  Then some mental pressure will be off me and I can clearly decide what I plan to do with myself.  I don’t see MIS (management information science) in my future but that is the kind of degree that is popular now.

I wonder if I can find a simple existence that will keep me occupied and give me stimulus.  Sometimes you’ve got to jump into the fire before you see it’s just a mirage…the leap of faith stuff and all that.  I am sorry for myself that I am such an indecisive, wishy-washy, scared-of-his-own-shadow person (don’t kid yourself, Lee, you’re just lazy); where could I be now if I were otherwise?  Why do I think that the mirage (a psychedelic image composed of “you’ll never make it” and “you’re not worthy”) hides other existences that are actually worse than the one I have?  Fuck it.  The pain I feel now is imaginary to be sure but I can’t sit here for the umpteenth time telling myself that I am better off than children starving in India.  I am not Indian, after all.

I’ve got to stop asking, “What else is there?” — just make up some answer, test it out and go on!  How long can I keep sitting here in a pile of self-pity shit?  Do I fear not being able to stand on my own two feet (another cliché, oh boy)?  So what if I fall down — it’s not like I haven’t ended up on the floor puking all over myself a few times before (but there was always someone there to clean up after me).  It’s just…well, it’s that part about ending up by myself that I haven’t resolved (kinda like it’s not the fear of death that bothers me, it’s ending up maimed that would freak me out) — I can always seek out new friends, can’t I?  At the rate I keep pushing people away from me it won’t matter.  Is there a safe place for the strange to live by themselves (and why do I keep thinking I’m strange? Aaaagggghh – I’ve got to stop struggling over wanting to be unique versus seeking out kindred spirits)?  Oh well, enough self-flagellating for one day.

I have an innate distrust of professionals — people who consistently work for money — probably because I’m such an amateur.  Why did I give up seeking professional advice?  Hell, I was paying for a secular minister, wasn’t I?  When was the last visit?  Um, late fall 1990, maybe.  The last thing the psychiatrist told me was I’ve got to decide that I want to live.  Why am I killing my creative self?  What am I afraid of?  Am I afraid of anything?  Why do I feel like I’m an imposter?  Why do I care what other people think?  Who are they, anyway?  I am who I am.  There’s no getting around it.  If…well, didn’t a friend of mine ask me if I’m not trying to exorcise something from me? Just one more week to find out.  If only…what was that?…oh nothing, I say to myself with a smirk, it was just a thought.  I’m safer keeping things to myself.  Am I tired of playing the game, the game that starts with interaction between two people and then grows into a society.  I’ve got to be careful.  I’ve painted myself into a corner before.  What’s the difference between the corner of a cliff and the corner of a room?  You can find many people who will drive you up a wall but you’ll only find one person who will drive you off a cliff.

Okay, so what I’ve got to consider is the following.  I know where I want to be.  Now I’ve got to be strong and stick to the plan.  What’s the plan?  Well, this is going over the Internet, isn’t it?  Yes, but to only one intended person. Let’s say I found someone who might keep her distance, has her own life, yet would spend the time to encourage me to break the bonds of mediocrity to devote my time to my writing (oh, quit it, you’re not kidding anyone, you’re still playing it safe because one, you already have a friend like that and two, that’s not what you’re thinking (and what am I thinking?  Hahaha, like there aren’t a million thoughts on this subject to choose from so no matter how much I write on the topic of having a friend external to myself, I will never get on paper exactly who or what I’m talking about but let’s just say…no, let’s not.  I prefer mystery, like the kind of mystery of what’s in the bottom of a bowl of gumbo, doesn’t matter because it smells good and you know it’s going to taste good so why bother analyzing the ingredients, just consume it)).  If there is no emotional bond (giving myself (or do I mean someone else?) another out on this one), then she wouldn’t care if I felt the need to tell her to fuck off sometimes.  At the same time, what would she be getting in return (at last, a chance for…should I dare say it…yes, I could be rejected here but officially, I’m the only one reading this)?  Hell, if I knew that, I wouldn’t pretend to be talking to myself, would I?  But then, when have I ever known what another person thinks?  Oh well, my other option is creating within my self the strength to break the bonds of mediocrity to devote time to my writing and in the end — let’s be serious here — that’s what I’ll be doing.  Hasn’t happened before so why think I can do it in the future? Everything goes in a circle, I’m back to beating myself with self-doubt again.  Okay, stop that.  Back to the plan.  Four more days to study for my final exams – tonight (Friday) (study for the business law exam as well as plan the darn trip to San Fran), Saturday, Sunday, Monday, test on Tuesday, test on Wednesday (my birthday!), Thursday to recover, go to east Tennessee on Friday night to see my folks, return on Sunday, Karen goes to Albuquerque on Monday.  Monday evening I’m free to do what I want again.  I will wait until 11 May to decide my fate.  Wow, I feel energized already and I haven’t even decided what to do yet.  Ah, but the decision to take a step is a step in the right direction!  You know what sucks (and I’m only saying this because I know I tend to push this out of my mind at convenient times) is that one thread of thought throughout my life has been the desire to make others happy, including my family, my wife and her family, and other people around me.  Finding the strength to break free of mediocrity is letting people deal with who I am.  I can’t carry the world on my shoulders.  That’s going to be a hard one to get over (how do I be myself without the crutch of drugs to lean on?).  Well, I’ve got to have a few personal struggles to look forward to, don’t I?  Time to call it a night on this one.

At lunch, Karen asked Lee how things were going.  He smiled his “I love you” smile, shook his head, and said, “Oh, it’s just that work and school are stressing me out right now.”
Karen stretched her arm across the table and grasped Lee’s hand.  “I worry about you, sweetheart.”
“As you should,” Lee thought.  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” he responded, “I’ll be fine in a few days.”

On Monday morning, Lee checked his email at work.

Leeeeeeee,

I look forward to your completion of your exams, your book, et al.

F

Lee thought for a moment.  “I do not rely on just a few words from Fredirique.”  He repeated for good measure, “I do not rely on just a few words from Fredirique.”  Feeling better, Lee started a new email.

F,
This weekend, against my better judgment, assuming that I have something within me that sees a pure source of life from which to judge my actions, I picked up the hardback copy of “A Fan’s Notes” that I had purchased on Friday.  I hoped that reading the book would bring me out of my latest funk. To say that I have been in a funk lately would mean very little to you, perhaps, because I don’t know much about the emotional states you have experienced.  I only know the so-called intellectual pursuits of yours.  But we who pursue the intellectual do so out of a desire for more, a desire that drives us, either toward or away, I cannot say, but a desire that grows from a feux d’artifice.  My funk is self-induced, as usual, and I can refer to the psychiatrist’s classification of me as a “situational depressive” to surmise that the funk I’m in derives its strength from my fear of taking tests, which is really a symbol of my fear of failure that I never experienced until I dismally flunked calculus at Georgia Tech during my second quarter there, confirming my suspicions in high school that when it comes to the love of engineering and science, I am just a fake.  My true love of learning is literature and the arts, where my capitalistic upbringing has led me to believe salaries are typically low and thus would be unrewarding.  Well, I fear that the tests I am about to take only confirm that I am still banging my head against the wall of Lee the science fraud, meaning that I should get A’s in both classes, if I don’t royally fuck the finals, but will get no personal satisfaction (oh, do I see out of the corner of my eye that ugly thought of instant gratification creeping into the picture?).  I know, instead, that what bothers me is the Lee who hates the society he lives in (or perhaps, any society at all; I don’t know because I have lived in only one society).

When I picked up Exley’s epoch struggle for the lost soul, I wondered if, in time for my final exams (or perhaps, at all), I would return from that literary journey of the mind of a football fan on the fringes of life.  I wondered if his hell would be my hell, if when I found out that he succumbed to the torments of life and did not return, whether I would find the courage to lift my hooded eyes and look to the horizon.  His journey is not mine, after all, and I may find a fork in the road never seen before (the superfluous (ubiquitous?) “road less traveled”).  Well, I need wonder no more.

I finished “A Fan’s Life” about thirty minutes ago.  I am surprised at the ease with which I flew through the book, the images of the town drunk – ex-P.R. man, teacher, etc. – rushing by like scenes from a Doris Day and Rock Hudson movie of the ’50s.  Of course, his writing is not bogged down with philosophical treatises.  He doesn’t so much explain his philosophy as he shows us how he lived it.  I thank you for suggesting the book to me.  At the same time, I want to choke you for putting a mirror up to my face, for showing me the lies I plaster all over my body with the words that come out of my mouth (pen, keyboard, whatever) that one day I will be a man of letters.  Mirrors are reflections of the outside of a person only.  When this week is over, I will have the time to pitch out the words that sit within this shrinking frame.  I would rather starve and write than sit in the life I have where I’m fat, dumb and…scared.

Now the time for studying is upon me,
L

P.S. Got to remember to talk about: positive intent of TVs, Muzak, news; literary tools on hand – dictionary, thesaurus, classics (or are they modern-day weapons?), writing tools (pen vs. keyboard), creative sources, creative outlets; new futures (breaking/building on the past), financial planning (simple lifestyle), emotional issues (personal – building, breaking, holding, using; professional – arbitrary success/failure); safety versus adventure, numbness in vs. learning through pain; current projects (Diary of a Suicide, New World Order, Tireone, Jim’s family); the silence of the audience, the squawking of official critics.

Lee sent the email on to Fredirique.  He then answered a few emails inquiring about various topics including the teachings of Joseph Campbell, a web page promoting the religion of a horizontal god based on Jesus not Buddha, the writings of L. Ron Hubbard and a cure for toenail fungus.

The next day Lee took a long lunch.  When he got back he heard a familiar Siren on his voice mailbox, “Lee-e-e-e, it’s me.  I wanted justa…um…chit-chat for a little bit.  I have been so busy I’ve been able to just very quickly read your emails but not really spend much time because it’s been such a busy, busy time at work and,” Fredirique said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “I’ve been looking for a new job and I’ve got some new leads so I’m ver-r-y excited.  Anyway, I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.  Um…but you can just listen to the sound of my voice and then hit erase.  Talk to you later.  See you.  Bye.”

Lee let several days pass before he listened to the voicemail again.  He waited a few more days before he replied.

Lee sat down in front of the computer.  He turned back to the phone and replayed the message.  “My, how Fredirique likes to tease,” he tried to tell himself but the tiny sandbags of words he threw out were not enough to hold the floodgates of his ravaged mind.

“I have spoken to you for so long that I’ve forgotten if I am talking to you, the person I know who will read this, or you, the person for whom this is intended, my long lost love.  Will I never love another like my intended?  Perhaps that is the personal problem from which I will never recover.  Can a personality be a problem, though?  No, because I live in a fantasy world that contains enough of the world around me to help me maintain an appearance of sanity, my personality is only a problem in comparison to those around me, those with whom I must carry on the activity called work.” — Z. T. Henderson

——–
F,
You need not worry about answering these emails.  Take them for what they are, the musings of a semi-madman.  You have been fortunate to perform well in our society, despite your saying that you are more mad than wise.  What does that say about our society?  Is the secret to life that we are all mad?  If that is so, then I am madder still.

When I stop entertaining you with these words, let me know and I will return to entertaining myself.  If I write solely for my pleasure, then I’m never sure if that is pure madness.  I am sometimes embarrassed that I get enjoyment from reading my writing, what a teacher character in the movie, “Fame,” referred to as masturbating, when a young student complained that he need not play violin in an orchestra because he could create a one-man orchestra with synthesizers.  The teacher said something like, “That is not music.  That is masturbating.”  Could it not also be said that person is a seeker and giver at the same time and thus whole?  Depends on your definition of life I suppose.

Well, my friend, you have given me the impetus to complete my journey through the minds of those who’ve gone before me, those who blazed a trail that I have unknowingly followed.  In other words, I completed the novels, “The Fan’s Notes,” “Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man,” and “The Tin Drum,” all in the past week.  Now what am I supposed to do? After all, “to know is to do.” I’m fairly certain that I know what I want to do but I cannot complete my plan overnight.

I do not have the notes before me of the thoughts I wanted to share with you so please excuse the lack of continuity between this set of notes and the last one.  Also, I will, as usual, share with you words that may or may not contribute to the friendship between Fredirique and Lee.  I’ve heard that honesty is not the best policy but I am not here to try to impress you, attract you to me, or otherwise falsely influence you in any way.  Instead, I am here of my own free will to share these words with you so that one or both of us may learn something about the human condition, from which we may gather strength, wisdom, beauty, and I don’t know what else, to use in the next life (that is, the next life that will be the moments we have not yet lived, moments that we are not merely repeating or stretching out for lack of something else to do).  I have lived this life long enough.  I can gain little else besides boredom, patience and an early death (death to self, not death to life).

I have spoken to you of a plan for my next life and you have stated that you anticipate reading about the plan, if plan is the right word to describe the preparation to pack my bags, acquire the necessary papers and board the ship that will carry me…carry me across unknown waters?…away from something?…toward new adventures?…I cannot sufficiently describe the vessel and journey I seek because I seek the unknown.  Right now, the preparation is the thing.  If you want a full description of the contents of my bag, I shall give it to you.  I shall give it to you in the next paragraph, which you may skip if you are not interested.

I turn from this laptop to look at my bag.  Actually, I have to use more than one bag to pack my things but I am not taking all of the things with me.  A couple of the bags are labeled, “excess baggage,” and contain, as you easily surmise, the contents of my current life that have become, shall I say, superfluous?  The bags I will take with me have been meticulously measured, the dimensions determined, and the space within filled to the brim with artifacts belonging to a member of the culture known simply as America.  Has anyone ever seen Atlantis or is it an inspiration only?  In any case, my artifacts may well have come from Atlantis for their use in the future is independent of the utopian promise they imply.  Shall I enumerate (should that be “elaborate”)?  I carry with me the following: my writings to date, a dictionary, a thesaurus (Roget’s International to be exact), a small collection of the Classics (Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, Locke, Poe, etc.), a laptop computer, retirement planning worksheet, clothes, photo albums and . . . well, I haven’t finished packing yet but the list of items will get boring if I continue.

Okay, let’s say I have finished packing.  Now what?  My dear friend, the one who lives far away yet sits in the corner of my mind, I’m beginning to see what I want to do.  Look at my mind with me.  Can you see it?  Have the worlds and images I’ve projected given you enough to illuminate the scene?  Perhaps not.  I do not always speak clearly.  In any event, the witching hour approaches and I must away.  Karen and I are going to east Tennessee this weekend to spend time with our parents.  I have not packed for this small trip.

I probably shouldn’t say this but I’ll record the words that I was pleased to hear the voice of the broom-straw girl on the phone.  That I could not talk to her was a disappointment but not the end of the world.  I hope that you find the job you’re looking for.  I look forward to hearing about the vocation you plan to pursue.  You sounded very excited about getting a new job.

I told my boss today that I no longer plan to do computer support. He told me he would see what the company could do for me.  I think the best thing this company can do for me is giving me my share of the 401k money I have earned.  But that is part of my plan, isn’t it?

Lee sent the email.  He shut down the computer and raced home to pack clothes for a weekend visit to see his mother and mother-in-law on Mother’s Day.  What did they know of his heart?  He had a comfortable life and a comfortable relationship with his wife.  What more could a man’s parents ask for besides grandchildren?

Throughout the weekend, Lee felt uneasy.  He walked with his father through an exhibit of local racecars.  He looked in the eyes of the men at the show and could not look back with confidence because he felt that he was lying to them about who he was.  He was not a garage mechanic, a car salesman or local boy.  He was a dreamer, a wordsmith, a man of fantasy worlds where people did not lose their arms and teeth in terrible accidents while pursuing their dreams.

Lee suffered through the weekend, as only he knew how — he punished himself on a minute-by-minute basis, thrashing himself with a whip of deprecation.

On Monday, he sent another email to Fredirique.

Hey, I’m sure you had a good weekend.  I hope you took advantage of our society’s insistence on creating a single day to recognize our maternal relatives and called your mother for Mother’s Day.  I spent time this weekend with both my mother and my mother in-law.

Anyway, I have created a series of emails just to tell you what I plan to do with my life.  Now I’ll finish with this email telling you what I plan to do and then you don’t have to hear from me ever again.

I already described the basic contents of the stuff I’m taking with me when I leave this current lifestyle.  I did not go into complete detail but you got the idea of the objects that are important enough for me to drag into my adventure, my journey away from the particular middle-class structure I have been supporting.

With my bags packed and ready to go I open the map of the human world and spread it out on the table in my study at home.  Where do I go?  What do I do with the rest of my life?  Let’s see, I have about $5,000 a year on which to live, not enough money with which to re-establish a middle-class living (thank god!).  Now that I know the financial restraints, I can narrow my search.  I want a place to live that costs nearly nothing.  Transportation-wise, I don’t need a car because I can either walk or ride my bike within a local area.  Well, that accounts for my physical needs.

Now for the exciting part.  I want to explore new mental territory.

Currently, my life is surrounded by . . . that line of thought isn’t working.  This weekend, while spending time with my family, I asked myself what it is, if I had my choice without consideration for others, that I would do for myself.  To determine that, I looked at what my life is now and figured out that I can count off my experiences of the day because most of them are repeated, not new.  For instance, in the morning, I get up, rearrange the covers on the bed, pet the cats, open the blinds, weigh myself on the scales, take a shower, dress, feed the fish, pet the cats, put on my shoes, pack something to eat for lunch, and listen to NPR (national public radio) on my drive to work.  From that line of thought, I decided to categorize the processes of my life.

I divided the processes of my life into four categories:  personal bodily functions (talking, eating, sleeping, peeing, etc.), the actions of others, my reactions to others, my reactions to the environment.  From just one of those processes, talking, I realized how much my day is filled with the discussion of the transportation system.  You know, “Some guy almost hit me on the way to work this morning,” “I hate it when people cut me off,” “Have you seen the new Volkswagen Beetle?” and “Let’s plan a weekend to see a race in Huntsville.”  When did I decide that fossil-fuel transportation devices are the central part of my life?  Well, I didn’t consciously decide to focus on cars.  I was just raised that way, right?

As you can imagine, many of my daily routines are the results of the way I was raised, not just by my parents but by the people — including family members, friends, teachers, television actors, movie actors, politicians, preachers, grocery store clerks — who have come into contact with me thhrrough the years.  In other words, I am the society I grew up in (while I’m on the subject, I hope that you have not been bothered by my casual use of society and culture; I know that these two words have distinct meanings but I am using culture here as in “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations,” and society as “a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests” from Webster’s dictionary).

I do not plan to leave my personality behind so wherever I go I will take part of my society with me (hell, my language is evidence of that).

So, with that said, here is my plan:

1. I will cash out my 401k savings plan so that I will have money with which to “start over”.

2. I will find a small place to live that is cheap, in a town or city setting, near a so-called artists colony, possibly in east Tennessee (in Knoxville, Maryville or Townsend) or western North Carolina (Asheville, perhaps); I have thought about going overseas but I know nothing about the cost of living outside of the southeastern United States, and my non-English language skills are limited.

3. I will spend my days and nights gathering new experiences and putting them down on paper.  I will not worry about being commercially successful.  I will concern myself with the inner joy of writing (loosely paraphrasing Shakespeare, “To thine own self be true/Thou canst not be false to any man”).  I will share my writing with my friends.

I have enjoyed having you as a friend.  Even though our time together in space has been a drop in the ocean of time, I have created a creek that flows into that ocean by talking to you through these emails or through my stories and poems.  I hope that your life has been enriched by what I’ve written you as much as mine has by knowing you.  You have encouraged me to explore life through words and I thank you for the patience to read them.

You should have a wonderful life with Paul as long as you both are committed to the future.  You yourself said, in June of last year, “Paul and I very different in many ways, but we both have the same goals – which I find to be most important.  My view of our future is everchanging and flexible, which I think is also very important.  I just want to have a relaxed, fun relationship which can weather any unforeseen issues.”  I hope that neither of you, when your relationship becomes familiar, fall into the trap of applying the stereotypes of husband (main provider who’s gone all the time and doesn’t do housework because he needs time to do things for himself — recreational activities, club meetings, etc.) or wife (household queen who quit work to have “their” babies and is now stuck with all the family duties so she has no time for herself), in place of learning more about yourselves or life.

Lee sent the email while wondering what he was doing.   Would he really cut off the only person who represented his perfect friend?  Throughout the day, he pondered the possibilities of Fredirique’s response.  When he got home that night, he patiently ate dinner, stared at the television screen for a few hours and then headed to the computer in the front bedroom.

Lee took a breath and started what he told himself was the last email to Fredirique.

Fredirique,

“Of course I’m mad,” I said to Lady, “I’ve always been mad,” I said, thinking of Pink Floyd’s album, “The Dark Side of the Moon.”  I put on my madman’s smile and laughed, jumping up and down to the music on TV.  I really am mad, aren’t I?  Normality is a statistical mean to which none of us wholly belong,” reads a clipping of the words of John Weightman taped to my desk at home.
And what is madness?  Would a madman turn to Webster’s dictionary to verify his condition?  Could he look to see that mad is “1 : disordered in mind: INSANE 2 a : completely unrestrained by reason and judgment : SENSELESS b : incapable of being explained or accounted for : ILLOGICAL”?  Dictionaries are for referencing the meaning of words, not for diagnosing a person’s ailment.
I believe I just found out, as I saved this file, that Karen loaded the software package, Microsoft Office 98, onto our Power Macintosh computer and inadvertently deleted several files I had stored under the old Microsoft Office file structure.  This is not the first time this has happened.  Karen is a person who thinks logically.  Application software like Microsoft Office should be stored separately from the data, she probably thinks.  My logic is not like Karen’s but am I illogical?  I think, “Application software and its data should be stored together so later on I don’t have to remember where the two separate items are stored.”  I believe I just lost some irreplaceable letters I had written to friends and family, letters that I go back to read occasionally so I know not to repeat the same things in my next letters.
I cannot take it anymore.  My attempt to understand any one person and live with one person for an extended period of time has put a significant strain on my limited brain capacity, especially with the stress of work and school on top of living with someone else.  I am living with a person who is doing work I don’t agree with, I am performing duties of a job that I have no interest in, I am living in a town that is far removed from where I desire to live, I am taking college courses toward a degree I do not want, and I wonder why I am not sane?

I wonder how you are doing.  You once left a Post- it note in my office on which you had written, “I’ve missed and I’ll miss you” (or was it the other way around?).  I never knew the significance of that note until I realized that without you as a friend I would have been back in the hospital years ago.  I don’t think that is fair.  In other words, I see the value of what you have done for me and tell you but I can never know what I have done for you because you know if you tell me that I will write it down and leave it out there for everyone to read in my next story.  I keep no secrets and apologize for not asking permission before putting the words of Fredirique on paper for others to read.

You are a kind and generous person at heart yet you put up a variety of masks before you so I cannot be sure if the kindness I see is just another mask under the craziness mask you usually wear.  Unfortunately, I see you through the filter of my personality so I cannot see the “pure” you nor describe you without tainting the image of you with bits of me.  That won’t keep me from trying, of course.

“Who is Fredirique?” I ask myself.  I look at her and see a woman shorter than myself.  She has long blond hair that reminds me of the color of winter wheat or broom straw.  She has a full set of eyebrows because she does not seek to conform to the plucked eyebrow look.  She is slender because she exercises regularly.  She smiles readily.  Her voice is often loud and boisterous.  She flirts with ease.  I cannot approach her because the projection of her personality is stronger than I am used to, but that is me.  Other people, especially people in a power position, are comfortable with her.  She exudes confidence.  What does this say?  Let’s say I pick up an ostrich egg and feel its strength, I marvel at the thickness of the shell and turn the shell over to see its contents are missing.  What was inside that calcium fortress?  Who is inside the fortress of Fredirique?

I know nothing about the seriousness of life so I hold nothing sacred.

I had started this letter to tell you that I am crazy.  I sat at work for seven hours today and did nothing (nothing being my reading and rereading of personal emails and surfing the ‘Net) but I was able to lie to the people who came by my office and convince them to walk away because I was busy at work.

I have been perpetuating this lie for too long.  The phone rings, someone asks me a question about software and to avoid my looking like a complete idiot, I tell that person the first answer that comes to my mind, regardless of the correctness of the answer.  It’s amazing how many people accept what I say.

It’s even more amazing that I can come up with an answer that works (I have no idea how often I’m right).

Although I have no idea who you are, I accept you for who you are.  Sometimes I am lost in this Me soup fog and am not sure if I am talking to you, the person who says “Hmm” so well, or if I am talking to the perfect You, the person who is not me.

Right now, with the passing of each day, I am losing it; that is, I am losing my place in this world of middle-class normality.  I do not know in which world you fit.  I only know that you are not me and thus I can lose you as easily as I can lose my sanity.  Should I break down, whatever that means, and wander away from the world in which we met, I hope you know that if I never talk to you again, I am not excluding you from my new world but losing my ability to reach back to the old world.

There is no meaning to life so I can go back to work tomorrow, turn on my computer, pick up a software test plan, and return to the duties of my job without anyone saying anything about my recent strangeness.  It does not matter.  I can be lazy and use poor grammar to record these thoughts.  No one will correct me if I’m wrong.  I can tell you to take a flying leap and I will hate myself for saying it but I will feel no better or worse because life and friends are fleeting.  There is no right answer.  I will never be happy because I will never be sure if I am doing the right thing and that makes me crazy.

I can start a new paragraph and say, “Fredirique, I love you.  Come away with me and we will try to prove that being mad is just as much fun and frustrating as acting normal.”  I can put all these words down on paper.  It does not matter. At the end of day, I look at the same face in the mirror, the face I protect from physical harm because the face puts food on the table for me.  How many of us have a personality that matches our physique?

Madness is contagious, you can get it from your coworkers.

When the day is done, I lay my head down on the pillow and wait for sleep to come.  My wife serenades me with her snoring.  The cats warm up to us and purr.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.  I once was lost but now I’m found.”  I hear the melody from a New Age version of the song coming out of the speaker beside my head and I know the words.  I see mists rising from an Irish plain. I see men dragging their bodies back to the house at the end of the day. They place their boots next to the door.  I see women wipe their brows and call the children to the supper table.  I confuse the images of people sitting under a sod roof in Ireland with people sitting under a ranch house roof in middle America.  No matter, the people all bow their heads and thank the Lord for another day of good weather, good food and good health with a good word for Aunt Laura who’s laid up sick in bed.  No one at these tables worries about the lives of movie stars or mid level politicians.  They do not take vacations on the Riviera or read the stock reports.  They know their lives depend on the production of crops and livestock and the watchful eye of the Lord.

Are these people mad to trust their lives to the weather and the land?  If so, our country is senseless because it was founded on agricultural principles.  Thomas Jefferson believed an agricultural society would provide for a stable government.  Now we live in the information age.  Does that mean anything?  Can we make any conclusions?  Well, sure, we can write something down that sounds academic and debate it on the air and in the streets.  Words are tools to help improve the human condition.  With words, we can communicate the condition of the weather around the globe.

We are human animals, you and I, and have animals needs to meet – food, air and protection from the elements.  Our goal is to reproduce ourselves to perpetuate our species.

My life does not depend on my working in the fields all day.  I do not have to provide for my family.  My wife does not stay home with the kids.  I can cut myself loose from the life I have and no one will suffer the loss of their daily bread.  Except for settling shared debt with Karen, I have no obligatory ties that bind.

The world is my canvas but I don’t know what I want to paint.  That metaphor sounds poetic and lends itself well to the image of recording life’s journey but in the end I will have lived and died.  How much the thoughts in my mind pleased or troubled me will not matter.  I can suffer in the confines of this house on Mohawk Road or pick up my bags and move elsewhere to suffer.  It no longer matters.  I have lost the capacity to love and laugh.  All I have left is words.

When you are old and fondly remember your past, think about the joy and beauty around you.  Do not think about me.  I was a person who exploited your persona to put in words the feelings I have lost.  You are not the words I’ve written, you are the wonderfully mysterious person behind the label, Fredirique Faye Smith.

Once again, I thank you for letting me hang around you, so to speak, but I can no longer maintain the fantasy of a platonic relationship with you and the married relationship with Karen.  Something has to give.  By law, I am obligated to Karen.  I cry as I say that I bury myself away by saying goodbye to you but I know that doing so will be best for the woman I married.  She has given of herself unselfishly and I feel I owe her something for that.

Despite my desire to live by myself, I know that I am lazy by nature and will find it easier to sit here, get a degree in MIS and work toward an early retirement.

Am I really mad, after all?  How crazy am I to perpetuate the society that created me?  In other words, I bury the thought that I have a right to be myself – there never was a self to begin with.  I am just a slightly skewed result of the society I live in.

The robot has been reprogrammed. He is ready to go back to work.

Goodbye,
Brother Lee

There once was a man named Lee who was married to a woman named Karen.  Lee desired the apparent freedom of a woman named Fredirique who was married to a man named Phillip.  Lee read, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” and saw the black veil as the protective cover that hid the look in the minister’s eyes of the discovery of a contradictory life.  Lee understood the minister’s predicament.  The shepherd cannot tend a flock and at the same time tell the flock that their existence doesn’t matter just because the shepherd can live or has lived a different life.  Lee put on his own veil and silently tended to the lives of those around him because he knew the lives he had lived in his heart were more than he or his “flock” could handle.

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