I’m sitting in Seattle trying not to think about my thighs. There is someone handsome sitting near me. We own the same pants. He’s wearing his right now. The way I got to Seattle was on a plane where I lied to everyone who was there. It’s not always that I lie. It’s very seldom actually. It started at the airport bar—the biggest plumbing contractor in San Diego was beside me, drinking whiskey and shaking and telling me about $3 marrow, when very suddenly I said, I haven’t done this yet, and he said, what, fly? And I said yes, fly and he became so nice and smiled so kindly and touched my shoulder and patted it that I felt very loved and cared for, so after that I was telling everyone, I haven’t done this yet and they were all full of love and showing me what to do. My seatmate Judy was especially full of love, she hugged me when I told her and offered me gum and then she put her headphone into my ear and we listened to Bonnie Raitt as we ascended and when I said, oh Judy, this is my favorite song, she said, I knew I liked you the moment I saw you, and she loved me extravagantly in that moment and she grabbed my hand and held it for ten minutes while I kept my eyes shut and listened to her music which had changed from Bonnie Raitt to hymnals about Jesus and so on, and after that there was a sermon. I took my headphone off when the sermon began and I said thanks, Judy, we did it! We’re alive in the air together –isn’t this amazing—everyone here has lives that they continue to go on with, this is incredible and I patted her arm while I said this and then she began her story of Cody, Wyoming and the sick horses.

There’s a man. I loved him once, forever. It’s all I could do. It became so difficult continuing to love him that I flew to Seattle. Loving him is like thinking about the shore of the ocean when you’re sitting on the shore of a small lake and it’s dusk and the raccoons are there. I have loved him many times, in many states and conditions. I have loved him in air and while shaking hands with someone famous. I have loved him in winter and while thinking about the solar system. I have loved him in an aquarium, standing in front of a seahorse that I couldn’t help but fall for. I photographed the seahorse because my love for it was so deep. I loved two things then.

Before Pont left for work, she drew me a map of the surrounding area so I wouldn’t be lost. The map is below. It’s about a street. I look at it from time to time to remember where I am and to remember I’m not lost. I think about how easy it would be to walk away from the map—leave it right where I am now and go away from it—how important it could become to another person, how I might feel without it, how sad it would be to think about it here, without me.

As someone in the world, I find it increasingly difficult to gain access to what’s before me. I think about it, about how I’m here and it’s there. How we are to one another is severely preoccupying for me—what can mean because of our positions. I try to make a correspondence occur. Correspondence is very important to me. I find it very meaningful. In correspondence there seems to be eventuality.

The truth is I have flown before. I flew to California and to New Jersey. When I flew on Sunday I hadn’t flown in ten years so it felt like I had never flown, and in the ten years I would say to the other people and to myself, I don’t fly. On Sunday I woke up and said to myself, this is the world and people here fly and then I thought about how important it could be to fly and then I bought a ticket and flew to Seattle and was alive the entire time.

The last time I flew, I did it with a man who was my boyfriend. We had been shooting speed for days and had to meet his family after the plane. I did it because he said to. I didn’t feel like doing it but I just did it and when we got there we cried and fought and slept at his grandmother’s and fucked on the floor and we’re very angry at one another.

Sometimes it’s unbelievable that this is the world. I watch a very long film about a hedgehog and close my eyes when it finishes.

I might be having a fling right now. Pont says I am. I’m sleeping with someone maybe three or four times a week. When I asked him if we were having a fling, he said, don’t know—haven’t thought about it. I said oh, well, if we’re having a fling I like having a fling with you and then we went to sleep. Having a fling feels like sleeping with someone and not enacting tense. I guess that’s what it feels like—if this is a fling then that’s what it feels like. We don’t talk about the past, nor do we talk about the future and the closest we’ve come to talking about the present was when I said my question about the fling.

I don’t know what happens in time. There is someone that I love and he is there, being very mysterious. I place him in my head near everything that’s here. He looks nice this way. Sometimes the person that I love loves me back and we go into space together and become very emotional. After we come back, we quit speaking for long periods of time.

I’m very rarely apologetic. In love, I’m apologetic. I think the whole world exists. And that there are people. They come and go. Everyone is full of promise. Most people are nervous. Someone can get to a plane three hours early because of it. Grooms can be nervous, too. They can feel like their entire lives are ending, or are turning into something that is difficult and unenchanted.

I haven’t been a nervous groom before, but I could be. I would marry everyone if I could. I married someone once. It was in December. The day I married someone I couldn’t get out of bed. My aunt told me I should get out of bed because of the marriage. I went to the courthouse. My father filmed me laughing.

The man to whom I was married had a lovely family. We bought a house and acquired pets. It was all very fine. During the time we lived in the house I became insane. I stopped eating regular meals and became terrified of food and of touching things. This lasted three years. I was just crazy then. Because I didn’t tell anyone I was crazy they didn’t know. I couldn’t do anything about being crazy so I fell in love. When I fell in love I became even more crazy. The person I fell in love with is the same person I go into space with sometimes. I think I will love him forever.

It might be the reason I love him is because when I was crazy, he said he was crazy and he didn’t know about me being crazy and when he said it I almost fell right over. He was afraid of food, too, and because he was the only person that had ever said my thoughts to me without me telling him my thoughts, I went crazy and now I will love him forever.

There is a strong possibility that the man I love is the worst possible person to love in the entire universe. I get this feeling because we only love each other in a pretend way. We do not see each other, nor are we capable of seeing each other because we are both too emotional and he is a liar.

We did see each other once. In Montana. We went to a waterfall and talked about marriage. After we went back from the waterfall, we bagan to kiss in between two motel beds. I wasn’t very good at kissing. I started the kiss in a very perfect way but then I became paralyzed and couldn’t move my mouth right and then I felt nervous because he was kissing me and I wasn’t kissing back and then I walked away. This was embarrassing. Since it was our first kiss, I tried to recover and I said, I liked that—I’m sorry I messed it up and then he kissed me again and I messed it up again. I was so embarrassed that I wanted to drive straight into a mountain range.

+++