Tue 19 Mar 1996 10:36
19 1036am Even is a girl Charles and I met at third beach on the pacific coast of the olympic peninsula. The others were Megan and Jaime. Even was reading on a driftwood log when I first saw her. She was reading The Fall, by Camus. She has crooked teeth. She looks to me like she is from those nordic people, like the laplanders, if they have blond hair, and I think they do. She also reminds me of Helga, whom Wyeth painted, but her nose and cheekbones are not so angular. She had not graduated High School yet, and the other two had finished a quarter or semester early. They came from bozeman, MT. Even said she had taken a Ferry to Alaska, it sounded like, by herself. She said she had taken her wetsuit she had used when Scuba Diving in San Diego and wore it so she could swim in the river in winter. I asked what they did in winter, and they said, ski. Megan, it seemed, looked at me across the campfire. I think she looked strangely, but I am not sure how she looked, and I don't know why, or if she even did. Jaime was sunburnt and looked irish, with red hair straggly. As crazy people go, I think even qualifies. Even, how did you get that name? "I was an even tempered baby. My mom wanted to call me evening, but my grandma thought I would become a prostitute." Its just her and her mom. I have gone floating in the Pacific in my drysuit, but I don't have the motivation to be terribly crazy anymore. I think everyone is a little crazy, and that is their most valuable part, the more the craziness is expressed, the more human they are. Or is the craziness doubting. There are some things we hide which are the most normal. Maya, my guess is she has a terrible craziness, and it will get worse, but will she hide it, and she does. What can we get most from another people? An idea thought, I don't know what I could get from another people. We have the ideas of those before and we notice them only because they were new at the time, and new at this time. What is your infraction, what is your ....swirl, your deviance from pure, your contaminant. I don't think the anomaly is the greatest part about the person, about person about human. The man in the movies craziness was to destroy the human population with a virus, so the natural could live free. I do think the uniqueness is the greatest part about the person. Paradox, the uniqueness is the greatest part about the human, but I cannot live alone. If I ask, as you do, in a cabin, all alone in Alaska, what would I do, what do they do. I would think about people, and minimal survival, if I was ambitious. If survival was tough that is all I would think about, and maybe be content, and motivated to achieve better quality of survival. I have achieved very easy survival. I work very little, and I have a place to live and some thoughts to write, and you, an audience to write them for. I wanted to reduce my haves to very little, all I really want is thoughts and an audience, and some stimulus for new ideas, and new experiences, a person is best, a trip will do, because there are people we will see. I feel however, I have nothing to tell you, what can you tell me? I have been made to think and made to do by others thoughts and actions, can mine make you think or make you do. But I do not think anyone would want to be in this position. So I see Even, or someone else. I am excited, I want to hug her to talk to her, so I read books, to have something to talk about, if she had read them to, and so I can say things more prettily and more interestingly. We can talk about so many books and so many ideas, and we can hug eachother, and be comforted. But you see, I will lose this job shortly, and have to find another, a real one. I could live in a place where all the work I do is for survival, or like the nearings and thoreau, just enough, to get by. I will be alone a lot, but sometimes people will come by, and we will have real conversations. And I free to read what books I can comeby. I will not have my own land, I do not think, for I am poor, and I would have to grow my food. I think I could do that, but I would have to be spurred to action, and motivated that there was some reason that I should expend effort to continue to exist.

I will work ferociously if I see an opportunity for experience, for emotion, but living alone, with my survival and only my books, does not afford that, though probably people will come alone, as for Thoreau and the Nearings, because what I do is a little unusual. I would want a computer, because then I could still pretend you are my audience. I don't want to infect people with my deadness, so I stay away from them. But suppose there is something they can gain from knowing me, and I don't know there is, I don't think there is. I cannot gain from knowing another person, we can only feel together, feel similarly, and challenge the other, and change eachother, by sharing our own experience. Our own experience. That is what we can gain. You have cried, you have loved, you have felt gray dead. Those times and those feelings have made you, have made me. I want more of that sadness, that excitment, that happines, and the human of you is made of that, that is why, it is good to have you, other person, around. I will come down off my solitary sea stack just to be near you. I will read your book, listen to your music, look at your painting, I will talk to you and ask you questions, and say. Even said, I think we are all a little bit of everything, now. She may be going to U mich, or some U of M school. So you, you people are auras of emotion, what has made you, what I've been wanting to share so long. If I could only know all the experiences that have made you, why, I would give my soul for that. You are of course the work of art, the product of those experiences, and so I can know you, and study you and experience you. That is all old experience but where do new ones come from. If I had a kid I would name her a number, say 27. That would be her full name Twenty-Seven, though I am afraid people would call her Twen, she would write her full name as numbers, or a cursive twenty-seven. If I had a tattoo, it would be a barcode on the back of my neck. I could call her Rebekah, or Sarai, or Even, Ava, Jessica, Jaime. She will tell them her name is Twen, and if they will ask, she may tell them, I was named Twenty Seven. Would you like to be named thirty five, thirty five sixty three. People would not call your full name. Every name, every number has a character, has an association, an impression.

New ones, when we both embrace, knowing we need it, that is a new experience, that makes me, I remember, we two expressing a need in its fulfullment, our need to be appreciated without condition, always. It makes us keep living, if we do not have it, we can lose enthusiasm and die, so is that happening here. I can call up Tanalinda and go for a hike, and I will, given time, I am a fool to not leave my self time, and I may not, unless I lose the job. A hug, a presence expresses without words, and we are both giving, or we three are giving

quiet, quiet, just looking for a path cannot find by looking
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