Just looking for intelligent conversation -- (E-mail)

[A response to the e-mail quoted in this post.]


Dear Edward,

Oh how your reply made my mind and heart sing. It's so exhilarating and enthralling to meet someone who has the capability to write. It also gives me joy to know you are curious about the human condition. Observing others is a favorite past time of mine, particularly while traveling. I admit to reading memoirs voraciously, though some may be considered less than intelligent.

Please tell me, who are some of your favorite authors? I personally love J.D. Salinger, William Blake (poet I know), Garrison Keillor, Alan Moore, Erma Bombeck (who never ceases to make me laugh), Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Chretien De Troyes, and Clive Barker. I read constantly and in the future hope to be a librarian. [Once], I worked at the [library] and would often hide in the shelves upstairs and read while I was supposed to be putting away books.

[omitted segment]

Please, share more about you. What makes your heart soar? What do you want to be when you grow up? Where is home for you?

Sincerely and utterly intrigued,
[Sagacious]


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[Sagacious],
The first sentence had the same effect on me as that which was expressed by it. It is exactly that sort of abandon which fosters and sustains this rare sense of childish freedom while frolicking through the mental landscapes I share in conversation.
I will note some dissimilarities between us: I possess no "higher" education; I graduated from a Catholic high school and received technical vocational training during my service in the Navy; I have settled in several, distant locations throughout the United States, but would not consider myself to be "travelled", much less "well travelled" - I have yet to leave this country. Since childhood, my imagination was the stage for my experiences, the canvas for the emotional portraits I painted and interacted with. Within the last year, I cleared the forest that I referenced in a years-old poem of mine - I'll paraphrase it "I sowed and nurtured this forest as it grew up around me, hiding from my view the world that I now so desperately seek."
It has been too long since I read frequently and well. "The Watchmen" is the last title I read; I was impressed. Before that was Orhan Pamuk, "My Name is Red" and "Snow;" Neil Gaiman, "American Gods;" William Goldman, "The Princess Bride," Dave Eggers, "You Shall Know Our Velocity!" and Tom McArthy with "Remainder." My favorite movies to date are "The Fountain" and "Adaptation."
Until recently, I found it odd that I have read as little as I have. I am sure that I've read a great deal more than the average American, but much less than I know my intellectual friends to have done. Rather than viewing this relatively meager exposure to published knowledge as a shortcoming, I take pride in and am granted confidence by the fact that I have forged my own understanding of what is. When I reached the climax of the urgency of my questioning of life and "it all," I meditated and sought out the most basic, irrefutable knowledge that I possess; upon finding it, I built and exposed with it a progressively complex understanding of the nature of existence and the relationships of its elements, including Creation and dimensionality, gravity and time, consciousness, morality and evolution, and perspective, and perspective, and perspective. I am granted a powerful sense of comfort by a discovery that I made since, one that I find it necessary to remain aware of while interacting in this sea of others: I am fallible. Knowing this, I seek to understand others rather than to judge or "correct;" I find that this mindset feels most natural.
I feel that only recently have I become balanced enough to read, to draw what I am able from others' portrayals. I intend to read the many books which I possess and have left unread. I intend to continue seeking until I find my true purpose in life. I would like to write; though a career in writing, as any other transition I might make, is not likely to provide me with an income comparable to that of my current employ. I would also like to act in meaningful movies, to be tapped as a creative source for television and movie plot and character creation and development, to be asked to interpret and predict the behavior of "psychopaths" - more than anything, I want to be a superhero and a much-needed fountain of philosophical simplicity. I expect never to be, and remain impatient to witness the change that I persistently sense is necessary despite my acknowledgment that my perspective is limited, infinitesimal in the midst of it all. I'm driven to a fate I have yet to identify. I would also be satisfied to stay this or some equally mundane course and patiently live out my life, rendering what good I can until its end.
More than anything, I want to be understood.

Drowsy Enough to Entertain Doubts Regarding My Ability to Continue Writing Coherently and Quite Contrite for this Asinine Sign-Off,
Edward

Howdy (from somewhere a bit closer than "across the pond") -- (E-mail)

Judge me not by my corny subject line. I'm usually capable of crafting worse than that. I'm tired, as my unwelcome wakefulness is abating, and I feel my cognitive function slowing - I am rarely direct in my speech, concentrating more on the periphery of my concept of something and hoping that my counterpart to form their own impression of the body of the idea; I'm verbose, and - as has become cliche within my self-description over the last few months, that being the only aspect of the phrase and its applicability to me that I dislike - "I'm overwhelmingly forthcoming." When I began that sentence, I meant only to convey that I judge myself not fit to aptly respond to what it was that I so enjoyed about your post... I just caught myself drifting off while staring at the subject line for several seconds before jarring myself back into awareness.

If I may borrow your words:
"I think that the written word is the perfect avenue for self-expression and am interested to meet those with an affinity for its flavor."


And I mean each word that you said - all jest aside.


I'm in #########, ##, and would love to couch surf to Austin some time in the next several years. I thought it'd be clever to jump the gun on that one.


I am confident in my ability to entertain you with this our language. I hope you are able to do the same for me; I greatly enjoy refreshingly eloquent encounters.

IAmYouAreMe

To Joh -- (E-mail)

I value the qualities of a person much more than those of their vessel. I am not my body. I know a brilliant man, a dear friend of mine, who is paralyzed from the pectorals down. He is no cripple.

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I deem that the most important thing to know about me as I am now is that, for the last year or so, I have been consciously discovering and re-defining who I am, my perspective, and my understanding of the nature of existence. I began soon after I returned to #########; I halted the momentum that had been driving me for more than a decade, and I found myself and have been evolving since. I often feel out of place amongst others because of the broadness and openness of my perspective and my ability and desire to express it. When I hear a person relating how angry they are at something, or speaking in a derogatorily judgmental manner of another, I find myself unable to empathize. As empathetic as I am, I find that I do not understand cruelty or indifference. It baffled me as a child, as well.

I am, absolutely, an open book. I guard my words for the sake of others, depending on the situation, but there is nothing that I am aware of having an unwillingness to discuss. When interacting with someone, I want, above all, for them to know just who I am without lies or pretense.

A Response to Me Post -- (E-mail)

Dear Random Gentleman with the Intriguing Post,

To be frank, I normally read the craigslist personals at night just for fun, and I rarely find anything of substance. However, your entry truly caught my eye. Also on an honest note, I must divulge that I am happily in a relationship, but I would love to have intelligent conversation. It's a hard commodity to locate.

I'm deeply interested in talking about matters of faith and religion. Additionally, I love talking about literature, ethics, and all manners of topics. Thus far, I've led an interesting life through various jobs and friendships and often just like to share beliefs and personal experiences.

If you're still interested, feel free to contact me at this email. I would love just to have to have someone to talk to here, as the aforementioned relationship is long distance, and I'm often in ######### by myself.

Take care and have a relaxing Sunday.

Sincerely,
A random lady who is exceedingly curious


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My Dear Randomly Sagacious Muse Whose Display of the Self-Similar and thus Familiar Products of Her Own Nimble Mind Didst Render Me Immediately Fond of Their Conceiver,
I feel, now, less alone.
Infrequently, I experience something after which the dapper narrator of my life - that nearly ever-present voice monologuing inside of my skull, constantly vying for and mostly winning my attention from the experience of life itself - is left, ever so briefly, speechless. This time, I resorted to a tellingly trite summation: "Awesome."
I don't wish to convey that I am a lonely soul - though I am, at times, as I am a bit of everything, at times.
You may apply the majority of your message to me: I read much of CL for entertainment, as I am ever curious about the human condition and the broadening of my perspective by the consideration of others'; I am also - and "deeply" is the word I most often use - interested in discussing the topics you mentioned, including, especially, the "and all manner of topics;" I enjoy the experience of coming to know a person, I find it more rewarding than any other that I can readily call to mind - and I am patient for times at which I am delighted to realize that I have found someone who is capable of understanding me.

With Pretty Fond Regards,
Edward

p.s. I convey that my chosen style of locution rarely has occasion to demonstrate this level of poise, and that, though I usually tailor my manner of speech to best suit what I understand to be the nature of the audience, I rarely have occasion to stretch myself. I look forward eagerly to refreshing parley.

Self-sustained unacceptability.

I know myself to be the bastard creation of, among other things, what I knew and what I was told, and remain unable to accept the unity of those halves - a condition self-sustaining, as would be its inverse. What choice can I make to become something else? I strive now to maintain my connection to this place where I am at peace, my state of balance, my absolute state. I am both, now; stating this makes it so. I shall see if it lasts.

As I drifted to sleep,

I dreamt that some frustrated, ancient being that dwells along with me inside of me was smothering me down into the earth with its enveloping arms, weary of my self-loathing, its hands stifling my pleas; I screamed within my thoughts "How can you judge me so? You know me!" I sensed from the titan, featureless and translucent, a smile as he faded away, leaving me to the void. My head rang with echoes of my own voice as it spoke a thought not my own - "why, indeed?"

I still do.

I hoped the whole time I was breathing into her cold, wet nose; I cradled my terrified hope, certain of its impending end, certain that it was going to be extinguished and be consumed. I think that's what drove me so far from the experience. I could not hold hope dear; it was certain to hurt me. It hurts right now, until tears, to recall it.

How did I ever manage to believe that I was detached from it? I felt that question intensely as I typed it, but no more; I know how I managed to believe it - I was detached. I skipped town and analyzed the situation and acted in a manner that I calculated maximized the likelihood of the puppy's recovery... and of the salvation of that hope.

I am either utterly attached to, or utterly detached from any aspect of my perspective, including experiences - as they happen, and in my recollection of them. Those superlatives raise some questions; I've some meditation to do.