AN E-MAIL I SENT TO LORRIE MOORE
BY TAO LIN
|
I found your e-mail ADDRESS. I found it on the INTERNET. Do you know the INTERNET? I used GOOGLE. I also found your phone number. I stored it on my CELL PHONE. CELLULAR. I called you last night. I imagined the phone ringing in your office at the University of WISCONSIN. I VISUALIZED the phone. Ringing in your tiny little office. I also saw a MOUSE. It was in the corner. In your office. It waggled its tail and zipped across the carpet. On your DESK, you had a student story. On it, you wrote a note to yourself. Your note to yourself was this: BUY WHIPPED CREAM FOR THE STRAWBERRIES ON THE WAY HOME. How are you going to explain that to your student? HOW? This is JUST ONE of the many questions that haunts me EVERY night, that PRICKS into my brain lobes, that question-marks itself all up in my NASAL CAVITIES, causing BROBDINGNAGIAN INSOMNIA. My THING tonight is PUTTING selected words in ALL CAPS. I THINK this is a good THING. I'm 20 years old. But I never know. What if I'm 80 years old? These are the metaphysical dilemmas that riddle my EVERY LIVING MOMENT. What if I'm 600 years old? At night, I can't sleep. In the day, I CAN'T time travel. I CAN'T zip into an alternate universe for a moment, zip back, and feel what it's like to be OUT OF THIS DAMN PLACE. I can't touch my toes without an INTENSE SESSION OF STRETCHING beforehand. I can't love myself and pretend that it's SOMEONE ELSE who is loving me, and feel loved like a lover would feel loved by his or her lover-companion. These are the CAN-NOTS of my life. They constrict my every waking moment. Like a BOA CONSTRICTOR that's really a white picket fence, that wraps around my neck like one of those TWISTY THINGS you use on GARBAGE BAGS, because that's WHAT I AM. A GARBAGE BAG. LORRIE MOORE. Hi. How are you? How was your lunch today? On a scale of 1-10, how GOOD was it? Today I was petting my dog. He was like, YEA THIS IS GOOD. That's what his FACE was like. Do you get me? You know. His EXPRESSION. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what will happen when it's my turn to talk at the STARBUCKS drive-thru. WHAT will I say? I just used a PEN CAP to MAKE a giant GASH in my leg. What do you THINK about that? I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO KNOW. I WANT TO KNOW SO BAD. I NEED YOUR APPROVAL. No I don't. Really. I don't. But how can you BE SURE that I don't need your approval? The thing is, YOU CAN'T. And this causes me so much ANXIETY. So much ANXIETY that every action that I commit in this DISMAL WORLD -- EVERY action -- EVER, is, in my mind's reality, an UNINTENTIONAL NERVOUS TIC. MISERY. Let me quote you. "DEPRESSION." [Forever after at http://eyeshot.net/lorriemoore.html]
|
B R A V E S O U L S R E C E I V E
|
Archive of Recent Activities - Updated Submission Tips
Enhanced Navigational Coherency - Long-Ass List of Contributors
Super Lo-Tech Slideshow - Four Years Ago, Maybe - Three Years Ago Today
Two Years Ago Today - Last Year Today
*
MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND
hobart/monkeybicycle conjoined
steven
coy's "sandwich" (book) & "rubix cube dinner" (dvd)
*
Sex
& The Sixers: Long-Distance Love, Long-Distance Fandom,
the second installment of the eyeshot editor's ongoing
76ers-related column on (pnote) is now available
for free to all Internet users worldwide
we will be taking our regular wintertime posting hiatus at the end of
this week
and will return with new stuff just after valentine's day-
all submissions will still be responded to as soon
as possible, as always