I saved these on my PC because I loved them so much :) They really spoke to me as I continue to try to get out a depressive funk I've been in for a long time, and spark up my life! Thanks, Cary.

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Monday, August 08, 2005

Dear Lost,

Society is a gun. Don't point it at yourself. Society is a disease. Wash your hands frequently.

How to live in society without being killed by it? I do not know. It takes a little more out of you every day. It seduces you out of your seductiveness. It coats you with white flour. It makes your voice sound strange. It puts you in a uniform. It wears you down.

You could live in an apartment full of drag queens and record-store clerks for the rest of your life. There are such apartments to be had, though the rents have gone up.

You could tell your parents all about yourself or you could let them guess. Either way, you will not be understood.

Life is not something you can ace like a test. It's messy, glorious and strange, filled with blowhards like me who say things like "Life is messy, glorious and strange" and "society is a gun" like some 1950s beatnik. (I would march with the beatniks if I could.)

Become friends with queer people in their 60s. Talk to them. Talk to veterans of Stonewall and be prepared for a world as empty of theory as a brick wall. No matter what you say to it, you cannot persuade it.

Rejoice in your singularity. Get used to being alone. Accept that society is out to crush you -- but not because it is malevolent! Is the common cold malevolent? That's its nature: to make you sneeze.

Your job is simple, really. It needn't be complicated by tortuous contemplation about what you reveal and what you hide. Neither hide nor reveal. Just be. It's not your job to figure it out. It's the job of society, that ravenous beast of sameness, that gravel-crushing machine.

And one day, like me, assuming you survive, you will say to people in their 20s: You know what's really terrifying -- more terrifying than the deadening effect of society? It's that, bit by bit, completely of your own accord, you eventually become so boring that you want to stomp yourself in the face with a boot.

Which you cannot do because your knees are too stiff.

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January 18, 2006

Dear Academic's Wife,

I think you have placed yourself too much in your husband's power. You need to begin now a long-term project of reestablishing yourself as an individual independent of him. In order to do this, you must identify what you love -- the tangible activities, the situations, the images, the places, the sounds, the animals and plants.

Go back over your last 10 years and try to find those times when you were happy, the flashes of joy, the moments of contentment, the periods of life ranging from a week to several months or a year, where you felt most fulfilled and alive. What were you doing then? Were you doing academic work? Were you with your women friends? Were you helping someone else do something? Were you standing in the reflected light of your husband? Was it a family gathering? Were you delivering a paper or working alone in a room?

Concentrate on yourself, not your husband; concentrate on those things that have pleased you in the past, not those things that you think might please you, or that you think ought to please you if only you were the virtuous and splendid person you think you ought to be.

Write these things down. Make these things concrete. Allow yourself to long for these things. Remember the feelings. Let these feelings take residence. Encourage them; make room for them; cultivate them. Do this over a period of several weeks.

Meanwhile, as you go about your daily life, find some still point within yourself from which you radiate outward. When you go to a party with your husband, wish for nothing and ask for nothing. Be kind but secretly assess your feelings; ask yourself about these people -- who they are, what they want of you, what you want of them; are there certain ones that you like and would like to talk to, and others whom you despise, or in whom you have no interest? Talk to the ones who interest you and ignore the rest. Watch what goes on around you. Take note of who is kind to you and who looks right through you on their way to someone swankier and richer and higher on the org chart.

Learn this. This is the way the world is. Come to know this. This is the system of which you have allowed yourself to become a victim. This is the vicious system of status and appearances, of high school for grown-ups, of ever-shifting cliques and roving packs. This is the system of social hunger that rules the planet. Keep looking at this until everything has parted like a curtain and you bump into the emptiness at the bottom, until the laughter and smiles have evaporated and the frisson of excitement has left you and only the faintest whiff of champagne and cigars still hangs in the air and finally there is nothing there, nothing. At the bottom is simply emptiness.

Keep holding yourself apart until the emptiness becomes like a giant room of silence. When you are comfortable in that giant room of silence tap yourself on the chest and ask what is left.

All that's left is you. What you've got then is all you have to go on, but it is enough. Walk out of the room and regard your husband in this cold new light. Does he love you really? Does he worship you? Would he leave all this for you if you asked him, or is he entranced by it all? Are you his companion on the journey or the vehicle he has chosen to ride? Are you the center of his life or just a decoration, the centerpiece for his table?

Nevermind what happens if you lose him. You seem to intuit that you are going to lose him anyway. What's worse is if you lose yourself. You have almost lost yourself already.

So start by regaining who you are, and move on from there.

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