Informant38

picture this, a man in a room talking to himself, it's hard at first to make out the words so tone of voice is what you go on. he doesn't seem to be muttering in irritation the way so many of the lost, the footloose mad, do when they feel safe enough, or when their minds break far enough. no this guy, and it's hard in the dim light to see much about him other than gender, height, his clothes neither ragged nor sharp, but there's definitely no one else there, he's definitely talking 'to himself'. unless of course he's praying, but then his voice doesn't have the righteous sound of most public prayer, that layered-on sanctimonious performance most people fall into when it's time to address their personal deities. no, he sounds like he's talking to someone who owes him money, is that it? or someone who bumped their cart into him at the grocery store, no not that negative, but negative, yes, accusing maybe, but it sounds too like he's explaining something, that sense of a logical train, like one, two, three, or a, therefore b, therefore c.
logic and accusation, but what's that other sense, that tone? it almost sounds like, yes it is, it's that stand-up comedian thing, that schtick, the rap rhythm of a lead-in to a punchline, a set-up to a joke. and he's got that stand-up's bitter edge, that's what it is, self-hate from being there in front of the audience in the first place.
but listen, the sound's picked up in detail, you can hear the words now, the sentences begin to take shape.....

that's my life right there, my life right now anyway, and a lot of the last couple decades too, not that that's all of it, but some of the most important things I did in my life were done exactly like that, in a new form, a fragile medium so delicate a child's hand could erase all of it in a single gesture. but it had the immediate power of the living moment, not the held inspected crafted worked finished product but the right now come what may fall on your face or ascend into the night sky kind of spontaneous, what some of the younger ones took to calling 'free-style'.
I've been doing that since I was your age, and younger. in a dark corner of the world that only now has become real in a way that allows me to point to it. that's what I am. that's what I brought to this conversation.
it generated heat in a form that's hard to think about, for me anyway, hard because the anger it causes makes it hard for me to do anything but scream in rage, and the circumstances I'm in make any genuine emotions a kind of surrender, and anger a kind of invitation for punishment. I used to tell myself it was because I had work to do, that I had to keep whole, stay firm, but really I think I just got tired of getting beaten. it doesn't take too many times before the animal refuses to co-operate, and animal is what I've been, proudly so, a beast beyond the reckoning of any but the most imaginative and open-hearted.

because of that heat I carry, every word I've written you since virtually the first letter has been read by other people, most of them as they were being written. who they are, these uninvited, unwelcome readers, what they are, I have no clear idea, but that they're there, I'll stake my life on that. and I could give a fairly accurate description of their places in the world, sometimes, in the sense of their 'spiritual' stance, their intellectual abilities, etc. not because I've got access to any kind of secret info, but because I live in such isolation psychically, and because I have that kind of sensitivity.
imagine stay-at-home cripples with access to security monitors. only in the old days when there weren't so many cameras. it's different now. real different. and I'm credentialled old-school on that.
the irony is that it's my disgust at your cowardice that makes it possible to finally be direct and honest about this. because it doesn't matter to me anymore whether you can see what I'm saying, or, if you can see it, what it might mean to you.
you have your reasons for what you do, there are choices you don't see of course, things you could do, or could have done. it's like that for all of us most of the time.
my own version of that has narrowed down greatly. it's almost as though I no longer have any choices to make at all. each step now unfolds directly from the one before. there's a lot of light around, but it's a heartless brilliance that cares nothing for human dreams.
it's like the ocean that way. you go out on the ocean and your illusions are dangerous and nothing more. your hopes mean nothing to the sea. it is. it just is, and you make your way across it on its terms only. the light is like that now. and it's getting brighter.