Iʼve been thinking a lot about this thing you said that night back in Brooklyn when I went off to maybe have sex with Redford (I didnʼt, by the way — he just stretched my hamstrings for me and showed me several drawings heʼd done of different breeds of dog pooping), the thing about desiring some alternative category of togetherness for us
Because I feel that, too
And I was thinking that we could slit our wrists together
She said,
A suicide pact. I never even thought of that and here I thought I was more involved in the dark arts than you.
I said,
Well
Iʼm trying to be psyched about continuing to live this life so maybe thatʼs not quite the one I want
Itʼs just, like, this is all so BURDENSOME
But
I guess Iʼm choosing to gamble on the premise that thereʼs an answer
If only one in the form of some formula for survival
She said,
I donʼt feel very close to death. Let’s keep at it; we can do better.
I said,
Iʼm sorry living is so much work
I wish I could magic it away for you
Although I guess if you were someone who could be fooled by magic I wouldnʼt have nearly as much use for you
Use, admiration, appetite
Need.
She said,
Thank you for offering a vague sense of possibility that doesnʼt feel dumb or like lies.
I said,
I guess Iʼm going to keep trying to pack
Iʼm petrified of Berlin
I canʼt even figure out how to say “Iʼm sorry, I donʼt speak German” in German.
She said,
Berlin is amazing and everyone speaks English, they are ashamed of everything too. You will love it there I suspect.
I said,
Iʼm looking forward to some public toplessness, I think.
Are you seeing people? Organizing your room? Sitting in a cafe? Sending emails? Exploring? Eating vegan currywurst?
I said,
I just got back to the apartment after fucking around in constructive, aid-while-abroad-seeking ways on Facebook for most of the day over two cappuccini and a salad and a piece the vegan bananenbrod with some kind of peanut butter frosting which was EXCELLENT btw at the yes same one not-really-vegan cafe
Trying to make plans for either tonight or tomorrow with the guy who works there, but he is I think Syrian under his German and so his English is pretty confusing
Nursing some confusion about What I Should Be Doing Instead
Feeling almost breathless with loneliness or some other kind of emotional vertigo
In going through my Facebook friends to see whom else I should tag in my latest plea post, I discovered that this guy I had a mad crush on over my years in Boston with whom things never really got off the ground died in a bike accident four years ago
When I think about it I get cold all over
I included him on my get out the vote for Clinton email in November 2016
He’d already been dead for two years
I just redownloaded Tinder, although Iʼm not sure if thatʼs a bad idea or a self-forgiving one
My voice is falling into disuse
She said,
What a swarm of things you must be feeling
I said,
How can you tell?
A guy who was my immediate bestie on our freshman orientation backpacking trip sixteen years ago just wrote back being like Oh yeah I got sick of New York so a friend and I started an investment bank in Bucharest and for sure you can come stay on my pull-out for a couple of weeks let me look at the calendar
And Pavel just messaged that he found me a place to stay on Île d’Oléron, which is evidently an island off the Atlantic coast of France, so now this is thoroughly a fairy tale I am unready for
This is very exciting if I can just figure out how to be scared only a non-crippling amount of the time
I need to go to bed so I can get up and keep trying to move forward in some way even if itʼs not in the BEST way
She said,
Get up and do 10 push-ups first thing
I said,
Okay I will
First I will put on a bra because how I look is the most important thing about me
And then I will do ten pushups
Eleven, even
Itʼs weird how I waited for this for so long and then all of a sudden it happened
WEʼRE ALIVE AND ITʼS SO TERRIBLE BUT THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE
Okay well today one thing I had to do was ride in a circle and go back a ways and inspect what was indeed a hedgehog smashed all over Rue Continière
She said,
Tell me why you had to
I said,
I guess because I was like, Is that a hedgehog?
And everything I am ever doing can wait
She said,
This is an affliction of the bourgeoisie
I said,
Well what the fuck was I riding to?
My actual intention in setting out this morning was to find a starfish
And so I had time to circle back for maybe-a-hedgehog.
And look at it from various angles
And take some pictures
And try to identify some of the organs on the road beside it
Does that even make geographic sense, that it might be here?
Where are hedgehogs?
If someone had asked me yesterday, I would have guessed Texas
Actually maybe I have an idea from somewhere that they are très français
And now I know!
Also today I plucked a billion sea snails from sea rocks with the idea that I would cook them for dinner
But then I got back and Sylka didn’t want me to
So now there is an olive container full of dead or dying sea snails in my backpack
I feel bad on many levels
She said,
I wish that you didn’t feel bad at all
I said,
Thanks
I guess I just don’t like killing things for no reason
I thought about walking right out of the door and messaging one of my stupid Oléronaise Tinder matches to be like, Can we make escargots de la mer at your place tonight?
And Iʼm not sure if Iʼm not finishing it because I donʼt feel like reading it or because I donʼt feel like reading at all or because I do feel like reading, and badly, and Iʼm afraid of what will happen when I finish it
She said,
Donʼt donʼt donʼt read it right now
The world is falling apart
I said,
But is it?
I’m trying to imagine a future in which our capacity for happiness is less than it currently is
Are we standing in a bread line?
Am I dead of infection from a coat-hangering?
Lice?
Is everyone we know and don’t drowned in the rising sea?
It’s easy for me—with my sunburn and sack of discount bruised apricots and only a vague uneasiness at how the friendly fisherman affirm, to each other, “Juif” after I introduce myself—to be like, Everything is fiiiiine
But, like, everything is not fine
It’s terrible
It always will be, in various ways, and as things change, we will make changes, and we will go on
I don’t know what else to say
I’m not saying don’t care
But, like, run for office
OR find a way to keep enjoying the new and increasingly horrific world orders
As much as you’re capable of enjoying anything
I am the engineer of a small-scale sea snail Holocaust
My knapsack is soaked in their seawater, which leaked from the olive box while, presumably, I biked home, but my journal is dry
Yesterday Sylka told me that her mother — 90 or 95 years old, I guess — had a dream about telling me, Rachel, remember me
