Informant38

Since the world is such a busy place, we here at dangerbum.urg have compiled this handy list of reasons for any and all sudden silences and unexplained discommunications on the part of our valued correspondents. Please check one or more items where appropriate and have a nice day.

Dear Mr. So-called Dangerbum,
I am not writing to you because:

1. I am no longer terrestrial.
2. I have taken a vow of silence and intend to stick to it.
3. I have been kidnapped and taken to an unnamed foreign country where I live in a small windowless room and receive one meal a day consisting of yellow rice and unidentifiable meat and vegetables.
4. I no longer believe in the possibility of words.
5. I have gotten married and my husband is insanely jealous and watches every move I make, especially when I'm online.
6. I was sent a dossier with your complete FBI, draft board, psychiatric, and criminal justice records in it, and after reading the entire 1600 pages I no longer have the stomach to even hear your name much less write to you.
7. Your wife seems to have intercepted my last letter to you and replied with a very convincing death threat which I took quite seriously.
8. I am now working on rebuilding a cassava plantation I inherited on the island of Madagascar and simply don't have the time for trivial chitchat.
9. I have been adopted by a family of Inuit subsistence hunters, and we spend all our waking hours either getting meat and mending our equipment, or if not, we're snowed in and laughing and telling ancient stories.
10. I am now a pilot for United Airlines and security measures prevent me from contacting people like you.
11. I suddenly realized that I have nothing to say, absolutely nothing, nothing at all, nope, not a thing, not one thought, not one sentiment, not one idea dream or wish, not a word or a line, no sir, nada, nyet zilch zip squat.
12. Dangerbum...? Dangerbum who?
13. There are at least ten people that write to me with consistently funnier, more insightful, more profound, and far more poetic letters, in abundance, and it's hard enough just keeping up with that.
14. People say I've lost my mind but I say counting each individual brick on a three-story building is a skill and a discipline and good practice for more important things later on in life.
15. I now dress all in leather and have nothing to do with men except those in my immediate family.
16. I'm sorry, but you seem to have me confused with someone else.
17. I wrote you three times and you never wrote back so I stopped trying.
18. Fuck off you old geezer!
19. Ever since the Middle-east situation intensified I've felt that it's very important not to anger traditional deities of any kind, and since you are always so anti-religion I feel that it would be better not to be too close to you in case of lightning and things like that.
20. My new job makes my hands hurt so bad I can't type.
21. Everytime I sit down at any computer regardless where it is, the same face pops up on the screen singing some Japanese words in a childish voice and then as soon as I touch the keyboard the screen flashes twice and goes dark. Every time.
22. I have a cat now.
23. It's pretty obvious that books are going to be here after the electricity has gone down and all the digital information like email and so on has disappeared, so I'm writing a book which I will be glad to send you a copy of as soon as it's published.
24. I have become an Egyptian mystic and you, you are just some honky wannabe.
25. My heart is aching and the thought of writing you only makes it worse.
26. Stop bothering me I mean it. If you don't I'm going to have to call someone.
27. I haven't written to you because you're like a ghost, shadowy, impermanent, dark, and making strange unpleasant noises in a part of the room I can't see clearly enough to be able to tell exactly what's real and what isn't.
And because you're like a ghost from another life, one I lived long ago, in a different world, and this one is brighter but more delicate, and I need to protect what's here from that other place I've now left behind. And it's hard for me either way but this way feels like there's a chance it might work that I might get free at last from the chains and nameless weight of things that I struggled under for so long. Please try to understand, it's not you it's not even me, it's the way things are, really are, we can't change that so much as we can change how we look at it, how we let it affect us. And I'm looking at it in the rearview mirror now, leaving it behind.
28. I haven't written to you because I can't hear you or see you. Something is missing from how it is now, like water or air, something that carries the sound, the light when it's there. I know it sometimes more than others, a way of being connected that you can have, without ever meeting or even knowing about someone. These are the figures in our dreams sometimes, familiar in sleep, but absolutely strange in the waking moment. I'm awake now and I don't feel like we know each other anymore.
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me again
again