This is a work of artistic fiction. A condensed form was considered, but for sake of expressing the emotive evoked by the originally inspired manuscripts, one of a jeweled fever dream, the original form has been kept. It represents an abstract letter of apology sent to an old friend due to a mistake in behavior that was made during a manic psychotic episode during November in the 2020’s. It is designed to be reminiscent of classics such as The Bell Jar, Nova Express, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
It may help raise awareness of mental health to consider that mental illness effects nearly 6% of adults in the United States, and touches all our lives in one way or another, either directly or indirectly.
The form of the original document has been kept, but has been separated into several more readable parts.
My Timeless Cosmic Friend,
Greetings in the name of the joy eternal and everlasting. I hope and pray this finds you well.
It is with a heavy heart that I come to you today to express my deepest regrets concerning my recent malfunction of normality. I am completely mortified by the unbelievable behavior exhibited during this most recent manic flight. If ever I had a regret, this would be it. For the life of me, even with all the dark things considered, miles deep and miles wide, call it what you will, I would have never intentionally done anything like I had knowing that it would have harmed you or caused you to be intentionally upset. I think my behavior historically reflects this to some great degree, if you will but consider it. I swear to you that it was not my idea for this to occur. It was in uncontrollable error.
I can only imagine that you will find little immediate consolation in this, but if anyone was to suffer and grieve over this unfortunate accident, I assure you that my own tear stained sorrows for this are far, far worse for me than for you by many, many fold.
I admit to the facts that I did and said some things that were completely out of character, and potentially even some that might have been traumatically upsetting and hurtful. Earnestly, it was not my intention. Please know that I never asked to be this way, and it has been time and time again the central tragedy of a hard and troubled life. The situation we have now suffered was far beyond my power to control, and for that I am overflowing past the brim with regret and shame.
Timeless, when you hurt, as much as you know that I care, please understand that it hurts me too. I don’t want to see you, or anyone else suffer. What I want is the best for everyone.
I suppose that we all have skeletons hanging in the closet at this point. Lord knows that I do. I hope we both have the wisdom to recognize that we all cast a shadow in the light of day. I would never do anything intentionally to hurt you, because I am simply better that. I am your brother, your servant, a shield, and a friend. And you would know for sure that as much as I can be, I have always been for you, and not against you.
Still, here I am drowning in the icy spiraling undertow of my guilt. I am so sincerely sorry. I am so sorry. Beyond all measurable measure, beyond all speakable truth. I hope to God somehow that you will find it in your heart to forgive me. I understand your consternation, however, and I am completely overcome with sympathy, because I do understand you see the world through different eyes than I do. I swear that I will make it up to you somehow, someday.
I fucked up. Holy shit. I know I did. I make no excuses for myself. I know I was wrong. I swear I couldn't help it! Holy fucking shit.
I don't even know where to begin. What do I do?
Just recently I had a lot of weird drifts pile up, carried by the autumn winds. It seems that the compounded stress has been too much too much upon too much for me. I can't explain it reasonably, but I got some scary mail. It was serious. Then within a few hours darkness fell over me like a vortex of stroboscopic flame, howling.
I have some bad news. I suppose I have a serious degenerative medical condition that is starting to progress, which I certainly hope to somehow pull out of by some unknown means, but has not been looking good. The frothy bubbles in the beer are a frightening reminder of my mother's own slow and agonizing death from systemic organ failure. It takes a lot of character to look at the situation. I have courage, but then again there is the specter of doubt. There is no way I will be able to survive without, so it looks grim. I am stressed out.
As you may also know, my dear sweet Angelina Applesauce is in hospice care, which has been so hard to deal with. You know she is my best friend, and that I love her so much more than she'll ever know.
It is a hard life to love so hard, but in the end it's worth it.
I know you know how hard those sort of transitions can be. Life is too full of them. I mean how many completely magnificent people am I going to have to watch die? She is starting to get weak and short of breath, scared, nervous, and it's so hard to watch. She is comforted by her faith, but the final chapter does not always have a happy ending. She was always so spry and lively, and now the world is going to lose one of the finest people that I think it has ever known.
Did you know that the letters from her and my weird friend with the endearing smile were what kept me alive through some extremely hard times, my timeless cosmic friend? They're both really special kismet karma kaleidoscope companions. Funny, clever, brilliant. They mean a lot to me. When I had nothing and no one, they were the ones that were there for me.
It's been hard dealing with the prospects of losing them both. It has been such a cruel world. The earth is filled of poison, and the sky is made of iron.
My domestic situation is currently unraveling at the seams, and other options are not promising. I am hard pressed on every side. The staasi are upon me like bloodthirsty dogs of war, shivering jowls slavering for my blood on hot breath. There is typically no resistance to them.
I have a hard time imagining that I’ll ever be able to smile again without my old pals around, but having to face up to the difficulties of the seasons of our lives, and the natural rhythm cycles of eros and thanatos has been a solemn and hefty cross to bear.
Then again, the recent ebon hand death march drama, which is hard to navigate without my usual dynamic resources, was here with a welcomed postcard from Herbert (the tall one with the black beard) with some rather chilling news about my car car car insurance. I'm fast running out of options, the bills are piling up, and it's getting harder to laugh it off.
Then, that very same night, as if by some invisible hand penning the musical poetry of a stark tragedy, here comes chaos calamity a calling. I guess that I can surmise that with all the compounded stress there was triggered a hideously ill fated manic panic that has resulted in a nasty cold sweat battle to even maintain enough composure to barely survive the difficulties of daily life.
The others are surely noticing that I've been acting different lately, to say the least, and that my extremely fucked up life does not need the instability right now, and I mean that. I hang on by a horse hair, and for how long I can keep this up I do not know. It has been a true catastrophe, an apocalypse for one.
I have only yet gained enough footing to have only mildly recovered. I am strong, but cautious to assume that I will survive unscathed by fate. I must apologize for the lack of brevity in this missive, but no matter what I say, it will never feel like enough. I am so terribly sorry about this.
And I know this one is out of the blue, but I don't know how concerned you are, or why I mention this, but my cell phone has been acting kind of strange lately. So basic things are becoming very difficult. I guess I get that from time to time? I guess I have been getting unusually vivid phone calls from foreign area codes, visual face time calls with looping videos of flying leucistic doves bursting from cinder block walls like translucent smoke, bizarre distortions of spacial and temporal perception when I try to update it, and I mean, I guess it keeps playing the same audio books over and over, as if they were real, that's how loud they are. This thing isn't broke, this thing is inside out! Wonder walls obscure my inner maelstrom from discerning the unknowable truth. I can't even hardly use the thing. I guess I have spyware again, is what I'm trying to say, and I can feel it in my bones that nothing good will come of this. Why won't anything work?
My resistances to the inescapable gravity of the waking dream have been eroded. I am traumatically distraught, terribly damaged, overwhelmed completely, and gravely ashamed. Good grief! The fact that I, with all this awful bleeding beefsteak on my plate, made such a blunder in considerable error, and that I may have potentially offended you or hurt your feelings in the process of my own personal disintegration has me just terribly, horribly upset, and so, just as soon as I was able to make sense of the environment enough to collect myself and operate any device in a rational manner, I sat myself to this task of repentance. I am sorry it has taken so long, but I have been trying day and night to fight my own demons and put this thing together.
I admit that I have been in some strange blossoming florid phantasmagoria for weeks and weeks now, and that as soon as I was able, I swiftly set myself to writing this woefully inadequate little apologetic, in hopes that you will realize that although I don't think we were really doing very good lately, it has really been far too long without you around. I really want to say that in spite of all the madness that I really miss you and hope all your dreams come true.
Although I have somehow survived worse situations, if barely, I am going to talk to the plug tomorrow to get my thermostat adjusted on the run down, and although it's cold here, I am hoping it should warm up soon. I'm going to stick to the wellness programs that are available, take extra good care of myself, and never give up until the day I die. Maybe not even then.
In my own defense, I would like to say that I don't think that there have been any relevant damage control issues that I could imagine, my timeless cosmic friend, and to let the truth be told; I've never known any of the various bug spray lobotomy sauce neurowar architects to really wax it too drastic from a little bit of turbulence. Everyone’s an old pro these days.
For what it's worth, I'm already in the process of being politically assassinated, so realistically I hope that you will see that a retaliatory counterstrike is not necessary at this point. Thank you for you consideration. I'm already so fuzzled that if I try to walk down the street just doing my thing that there are about seventeen police cars with sirens on circling my one mile area to terrorize me into biological compromise. I try to keep a positive attitude about everything, but with everything else compiling, it really can be a bit much.
However, as a matter of decorum, I won't worry you with any further complaints. Thanks again.
I suppose that on some reflection that I am somewhat at a tearful loss. I am so incredibly sorry. I cannot express to you in words how horrible I feel about all of this. I know how sensitive your concerns can be, and I absolutely do respect your sensibilities regarding certain matters. You must certainly know me well enough to know I would never mean to do anything like that on purpose, and I do hope you will be able to find it in your heart to forgive me for all this disordered cataclysm.
But before you consider the appropriate response to my well intended petition, surely forgiveness and mercy, I would like you to consider that I am not, in this matter, empty handed. In fact, I have a small gift for you to try to make up for it, for the trouble I caused when things were out of control, and beyond my control, so that if there is anything I can do to make amends or make you feel better about the situation, please let me know. I will put my money where my mouth is. Please do let me know. I will happily make a sacrifice to show you how deeply regretful I am about this little hiccup, and hopefully repair some of this in your eyes. It’s not much, but it’s all I have for right now. It is not something that I take lightly.
If it would help ameliorate the situation, or help you feel better, I would be happy to consider gifting a donation to a charity of your choice the amount of $100, or perhaps gifting something neat and luminescent such as a petunia from light.bio.
Perhaps even if you would like perhaps a small pendant in silver from my family jeweler, if it would help? Honestly, I don’t know what you’re into anymore, and I don’t know necessarily what you would want, other than this. Maybe what you want is just me to be a self respecting full grown man about things and acknowledge that our differences over this recent slip may be as lachrymose and egregious as it is for me to consider, for horror.
I am however willing to accept that although the reality of the situation is less than desirable in its uncertainty, and although it may take time to reconcile, that fundamentally all hope is not lost. Just whatever you need, ok?
I will carry on in all probable likelihood that this unbelievably embarrassing upset is not the end, and it's not, I'm sure, and that when I see you around again, I will certainly be smiling joyfully to see you around again.
You will always have a friend and ally in me.
And so again, I say, if there is anything that I can do to help soothe your poor heart for all this, please, don't hesitate to ask. I would do anything to make it up to you. I mean it. It was my bad. I owe you one.
Holy shit, I'm so embarrassed. Fuck, I could scream! I wish I knew what to say or do.
I have pragmatically positioned myself to a conservative resolve of patience, respect, and understanding as best as I am able. I won't ever try to invalidate your feelings, but I will try to gently persuade you to consider that it doesn't have to be like this. I'm trying to hedge my bets defensively, and try to err for a while on the side of caution.
What I would like to do, just to briefly discuss it with you, if you'd be so kind to read it, is to quietly and peacefully build a bridge over these troubled waters somehow. I know that as a network engineer, you're an important person in the company who is busy with an active professional life, and that for you that means lots of high priority tasks and meetings that require a lot of care and attention. I'm proud of you for it. What I would want for all of us is to do so well.
Any day you wake up, that you’ll see tomorrow is uncertain. If, somehow against all odds, it happens that I am going to be around for a while, I hope you will consider all the amazing advantages of finding some time in your schedule to communicate with me. Perhaps, if you're able, to maybe once a month or something catch up with me to to chop it up oldskool and have a snappy conversation about neurospiritual warfare technologies, or something that stirs the senses, something of the sort. You could teach me a new trick, or just talk shit like we used to.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Regardless of the outcome of all this, I think you deserve to know that various sundry reasons that I am going to go be going dark for a little while. The only thing I think I'm going to do is very basic tasks and brief professional calls associated with my family's business, and that’s it. I don't know when I'll be back, all thins considered if ever, but probably by March, or around then. I’m not exactly sure, but I don’t want to be a part of this crazy situation any more that I am. I will, as a matter of common sense, respect your boundaries and be a gentleman, and hope that in time we will be able to move past this uncontrollable disaster, in friendship, loyalty, and peace. I care about you. Please stay in touch.
I'd like to also admit that if I haven't been as respectful as I'd ideally liked to have been in the last six months, which, perhaps in retrospective, it is only that because I thought that by adapting my cybersecurity response to a serious group of threat actors in the political dynamics systems near Roanoake, Virginia, that I would be able to maintain a positional advantage and gain tempo over my opponent. I guess it didn't work out.
It's a free country, but the data centers with Terralogic in Ontario were looking pretty good to me, and I was hoping to maybe get a certified job offer as a vetted helper or maybe do some networking in a new family dynamic. Something needed to change. In the end the snow and local crime were just too much for me, and I decided to go back to Nova Scotia, having learned a lot about myself and about Ontario that I never dreamed I'd know.
I really want to tell you something. It's something special. I guess I have thought about it for a while, but I wanted you to know. What I wanted you to know was that you are my special buddy who I care about a lot. You make me smile when I know you're around. You have a beautiful mind, and I care about the things you say. I consider myself blessed to have known you, and I am proud to have been your companion for a while. It has helped to strengthen and favorably define me in a lot of important ways. I am humbled at how much you care sometimes. Your own excellence was always an inspiration to me to seek and achieve, and for this I thank you. There have been plenty of hard nights of total darkness where the cold black waters of life were rising up past my head, and what gave me the strength I needed to fight the good fight was some little black cluster of inky little heartzies and the hope of one day seeing the sparkling eyes of the little prince
Realize that I do of course know that you're not really totally just all good, in case you were wondering if I were hypnotized or starstruck. I know enough, and can imagine some that you’re far too human, like all of us. I do want you to know that I have thought about it a lot, and truthfully you're not really totally all bad, either. What you are is a shifting dynamic interplay of good and bad, light and shadow, yin and yang- like everyone else. You are an incredible, beautiful person that the dazzling winter stars shine down on here, where the world spins around without ceasing, somewhere lost in vast endless space, sand even though you may very well have some regrets, you should take into consideration that you should always know that to myself, your family, and to so many others that you'll never even know it, I’m sure, that you are appreciated and thought of highly. You have touched a lot of lives for the better. You yourself are a miracle, worthy of dignity, fair treatment, and respect.
So yeah, respect. That's what's up.
And what do I say? You know me. I'd imagine that by now you know me pretty good, at this point. And I have some pretty good inklings about you, too. And although we are very different, anyone would know that we are also very similar, as well. Although I think we are on a different wavelength sometimes, I feel like our wavelengths are harmonious. I am grateful to be appreciated and accepted through the decades, and also very much grateful for a little microcosm jewel of good memories I have in my heart that I have earned with you as we traveled through this crazy universe together. I assure you that I have not, and will not ever take it for granted how cool you have been to me sometimes. I guess even with all things considered I am pretty impressed. I respect and admire you, and you’re a lot of fun to be around. It’s easy to care about you. I don't understand very well what it must have been like, the life you've lived, but somebody out here appreciates all the hard work and effort that went in to making you the individual you are today. I know it must have been really hard, more than anyone can understand, but I'm pretty sure it was worth it, because it made you you.
You have no idea the impact you had on my life.
Before I met you and went into IT, my trivial existence was one of endless drudgery and defeat. You helped give me the freedom I needed to be able to find myself, find direction, and even eventually find a family. That it no small thing, if you think about it. I wouldn't have the Jack of Clubs at all to dream about if not for the opportunities and on site training that you helped me with. Resources are hard to access without a little guidance sometimes. Thank you so much for being my friend. I won't ever forget you.
We are a tapestry without boundaries woven in the neural networked mycelium of the cyberdelic surreal. Since, what was it? Twenty years? Thirty years? We really have been through everything together, timeless. Do you remember a very long time ago in a land far away when I was a frogg prince, and, if I can go on feeling across the abstracted aethers, that there was told a bedtime story with all the open .mil relays and a silly little novelty .exe called "kablooey"? Was there a backdoor? I don't know if I'll know for sure, but I think I remember a friend seated on a golden throne above the glorious aquamarines, or emeralds, or pearls, and on and on. You get what I’m saying here. “Wow.”
Can you remember? We were so young! We *are* still so young! We still have so far to go, to learn, to live, and to grow- and I trust that the best is yet to come. There is no reason to give up hope, not yet. Not for either of us.
We used to spend all day across many recursive past lives chatting and laughing and cracking wise. I used to live for learning from you, serving and helping you, and of course annoying the living daylights out of you with my rambling on and on, just like this heartfelt letter of sincerest, sincerest apology.
I had slipped on a banana peel once, do you remember? Big old thing, like on that velvet underground album. I broke my radius and dislocated my ulna on my way back from Bangkok. Then wise old Mary Werner Braun started sending me all those get well cards with five dollars in them every now and then. Do you remember her? With the magic hat? I had been reading her short stories for a while, but hadn't actually met her until you introduced me.
I remembered how much I looked forward to it when she'd call me on the phone or send me some mail, and how it was like a desert rain when we'd talk and talk. It was the highlight of my day. I had all her pictures, there were a few of them in fact, all stashed safely in a little book. We were really grooving, and then suddenly the silver hammer came down, and I got sick with pneumonia and lost her email and had stolen almost everything I owned, then immediately after had to be relocated, and away into the machine I went, grist for the mill. What a world! Is there no mercy?
It was heartbreakingly sad losing touch. We used to get along so good. She was so delightfully strange, and sweet natured. I told her that I liked reading her books, and she said she was going to send them to me one page at a time if she had to, just so I could read them. Although those were among the darkest days of my life, it meant a lot to me that I had a friend out there.
I guess I lost my footing, and started to fall somehow in slow motion, somehow before I ever fell, and before it was all said and done, I really truly wasn't being the respectable gentleman I should have been with her, because my mind was racing from where I was drinking so hard back then. I was hallucinating pink elephants. She was pretty good to me, but you know what, timeless? I guess I didn't treat her the way a lady aught to be treated, realistically. I never got over it, even though she handled it like a champion and more or less brushed it off.
No one ever even visited or called except Mary Braun, and when she did, it was what gave me hope and strength to keep going, and was always the high point of my day, sometimes year. Sometimes it was so dark I couldn’t see anything of worth in my life at all besides. I know no words can convey something like what I’m trying to say, but if you’ll consider for a few minutes sometime what I’m saying, I think you’ll get the big picture in focus a little better about it. It was about all I had to look forward to at all, really, because until Angelina Applesauce and me were dating, she was the only one out of everyone, family, life long friends, everyone I worked with that wrote me for a very very long time. Years, and years, and years, and years went by languishing in an empty doldrum.
Then, well, I lost touch. And this is what happened.
Although she was gone, I prayed for Mary three times a day, once with every meal, every day that I was there the whole time I was away. You should total it up. I pray for her still, must have been the other day. I prayed for her from the heart. I used to howl and thrash and pray to God, over and over, again and again, year after year, in deserts so dry and valleys so low, to please, please, God, somehow please, please help me remember that address. I tried everything. My thoughts were stolen, my mind was a stained glass prism, shattered. She was my only friend that wasn't mixed up with such a rough crowd as I was in. My mind was full of tangled knots, and the closer I got, the further away it actually was. It was completely hopeless. I couldn't find it for anything, and I couldn't find anyone who could tell me where she was at, because I guess, as you know, she was always traveling. I guess this was during the cold war.
You wouldn't believe how I prayed and cried. If anyone knows how I missed her, it was God.
Because sure as the sun rises, one day she was back! I went to see an old country traveler about a dispute, and the man was able to look her up on fidonet and find her through her publisher. It was a real life miracle, a prayer answered against odds so completely insane that it was virtually impossible. I had never seen anything like it, and I’m used to the unusual. To say the least. I must have been the happiest man in the whole world. I'm sure I was. I must have nearly died from smiling. I'd never seen nothing like it, not to this day. I would read her missives when I was alone, and displaced, even when eventually everyone I had loved had turned their back on me and betrayed me, they were of no small comfort. They were one of my most valuable possessions.
But I never could tell, to be honest, what happened to me and Mary while I was away. I'd like to know some day, although it's not the details sometimes, but the big picture. It was never the same, not after we had been apart. Something was amiss. It didn’t feel right. It seems like she had her feelings hurt. Was it the distance? Did some one break her heart? I'll never know, but it never was the same after that. Never has been. I wish I knew. I hope she'll be ok. I trust that there’s a high purpose for every for all life, and that there is a right place for us all in the grand design.
I thought I had lost her for good, perhaps rightfully, but I guess I see her on facebook every now and then to talk about the weather underground.
I still think about her now and then. That was one cool motherfucker no matter what nobody says.
Open your eyes wide to read my words:
I speak not from the fragile weakness of a flawed character, but from the considerable experienced strength of a golden heart burnished and refined by the fires of hell. I say unto you, emphatically: please, don't give up on me just yet. Sometimes what people need the most is another chance. Let me prove it to you. Because in the end, a man always walks alone, but in truth he cannot do it by himself.
Let me explain.
In the afternoon the dog goes crazy, scratching and barking, lunging powerfully at the front door. He bares his teeth, indicating through rigorous display, that, like almost every day, the postman has arrived. And sometimes just when I had almost lost all hope of it, I get a little written postcard, with no specific return address, typically a small one with just a few sentences, sometimes less, letting me know that somewhere out there, my one special friend is still ok, still thinking of me, and still knows that I'm around, and sound, and down for whatever, come what may.
Love Amaranthine,
Anonymous
^ word salad, spam