pen pals [alicia/elijah nonsense]

[jamie]

2014-6-06
10:00pm

I was in Tattered Cover the other day & I saw this journal & I decided I really really really needed to buy it but when I got it home I remembered I already have a diary Ive been writing in everyday & the thought of just having this lying around collecting dust until I run out the other one was really depressing so I decided to write in it like I was writing to you.

If you want to write back it would sort of be like we were pen pals. There are things I want to tell you but I dont know how to tell people things without crying & theres already so much to do without spending all the time crying.

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6-07
1:00am

Right now Im sitting in my room listening to this couple arguing through the wall. I thought it was the TV at first but then I heard something slam. It mightve been a drawer. Im still not sure how to control what I can do. My dad showed me some of the things he used to use when he would make things happen but they were these weird devices he made himself & had forever & they could do all kinds of things & I dont have anything like that. Like all I have is myself. He said he would help me find the things I need to concentrate & we found a few things before but look how that turned out.

Theyre not hurt like their bodies are fine & nothings broke & all theyre doing is yelling.

I wonder if part of being awake is feeling like youve got to fix everything. Like I want to go over there & knock on the door & be like ayo nothings wrong just be cool & love each other but what if what she really wants to do is leave him. I dont know what theyre arguing about. Its none of my business just because I can hear it.

Or maybe it is. I dont know anything about anything.

OK they stopped Im going to sleep.

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6-07
9:30am

Im reading this book called Cosmos by Carl Sagan and Im almost done with it. I want to write this thing that he wrote here because I thought it was neat & its why I want to write to you.

He said

What an astonishing thing a book is. Its a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and youre inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Now my hand hurts & Im hungry.

OK see you tonight -
A.

[HDub]

June 7, 2014
02:37:33 AM

I didn't used to smoke. Well, not smoke cigarettes. I started when I got out of the hospital and didn't ever really stop. Mostly, I smoke when I'm drinking, except now there are reasons I want to smoke. Mostly, I want to smoke because I have an amazing view.

I say that I have a fucking VIEW
Not the wall, the sky.
I can light up and lay on my back and look at the moon and the world shifts.

You need something to focus on when you're doing this shit. It helps you control what you do, and finding that thing makes it easier. It's all trial-and-error. There is a way you breathe when you smoke that is calming. Breathe deep, breathe low, breathe shallow and you're just pussing out, right? going to fuck up the process. Smoking is relaxing not just because of the drug but because of the breathing and once I've finished off the cigarette the moment is over. I focus on the smoke and the way that it curls in the air and then when I blink everything is clearer.

You can see every star. My building is old, solid, the way it's supposed to be. It spark The new places aren't as solid. It doesn't matter, because I don't give a fuck about the buildings. I care about the sky. I care about the moon.

You have to see it, Alicia. If I could give you the moon, I would. You need to see this, I don't have words.

02:53:13 AM
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Alicia's entry on 9:30 AM is met with two plus signs by the quote by Carl Sagan, initialed ++EP

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Elijah tapes a picture to one of the pages. It seems to be a decent enough picture, and he looks young. His smile hits his eyes, though. Elijah had longer hair than he does right now, his features soft and vaguely feminine. He's sitting next to a woman who is older than dirt, and another woman who was probably pretty once upon a time but she looks tired and like she would rather be anywhere except sitting next to the woman she is sitting next to. There is a man next to Elijah who looks nothing like him. Their builds are too different, but their posture is familiar enough. In fact, if one looks too hard too long, Elijah doesn't really look like any of these people.


There's a caption. Christmas eve. 2011
And labels. Grandma mom, dad.

This is before shit went down. I had my tongue pierced and spent the whole night trying not to talk to Grandma so she wouldn't notice. Mom said if I didn't take it out I couldn't go visit Jenn's family up north.. I kind of wish I still had it sometimes, but I like not knocking chips off my teeth, LOL.

[jamie]

6-08

I cant find a clock in here so Im sitting out on the balcony looking at your neighbors wall and waiting for yall to wake up. Sometimes I wish I could stop time so good things wouldnt have to end. Like last night. If I could have stayed in last night longer Id be pretty happy.

But then I think of how immense that is and how I cant even tell time without looking at a watch and its like maybe its a good thing I have to Be Present and Be Mindful and all that other new age crap. If now is all we have and I cant make now last longer I might as well just be now until something amazing happens.

OK I think youre awake bye.

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6-10

I want to tell you about this time my dad got really sick. I havent told anyone else about this yet. They probably know what happened bc he said this sort of thing happens when the universe has to correct itself. Symmetry or something. Like the universe is sentient and gives a shit what were doing. After he stopped hallucinating and wasnt falling down and throwing up bc his eyes werent working like eyes are supposed to work he said it wasnt the universe itself but like the energy of collective disbelief. At the time I didnt know what the fuck he was talking about. I thought he was insane. I mean he might still have been insane but I know better now I guess.

It was right before my enlightenment, which is also right before he started moving us from city to city. We were staying at this house that belonged to his friend M. I think her family used to breed horses or something but there werent any horses on the land anymore bc her family was dead. So it was like this farmhouse in the middle of this big empty plot of land. We got there in December and M asked Dad to stay because their other friends Z and K (my dad was a K too but Im not calling my dad by a letter) were coming in from out of town too and it was this big deal. M asked my dad like five times why I couldnt just stay with my mom. He didnt want to send me to Tanzania is why I couldnt just stay with my mom.

This is going to make no sense. I keep trying in my head to make it make sense but it just doesnt. Like I remember M talking about Z and K coming in from out of town and it was a 100% sure thing that they were coming but theres an hour or so around nightfall I really cant remember. Everythings all fuzzy. I wasnt drinking or smoking or anything but its still like trying to remember what you did the night before during a righteous blackout. Just flashes that dont mean anything.

M was gone after that. I swear - one minute she and my dad were in the kitchen talking about Z and K and then the next she was gone. I thought my dad was gone too and I started freaking out. Like I had no idea what was going on. It kind of makes more sense now I guess? But I still dont know what happened. He was ou[ ]e and the only reason I figured out he was outside is I saw so[ ]ng moving through the window. Its a good thing the ground was all covered in snow or [ ] not seen him.

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Your parents seem decent. I dont know them very well but you look happy in that picture with them. I like to think youre not the type of person who would smile in a picture if you werent happy.

Hand cramp bye.

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6-13

ELIJAH IM SO EXCITED TO GO OUT TONIGHT

Alicia has devoted the rest of the page to a crayon picture of what appears to be a rave with a full moon where the disco ball ought to be.

[HDub]

June 10, 2014
I wanted to show you what my apartment looked like from the other side. When I looked at it, it really hit me how amazing it is. I told you about my view, but it sometimes hits me that there are so many things stacked on top of each other, like a parallel world that plays with ours. If you give something enough power and if you invest enough thought into something, it becomes more real in some of the parallel places. I wish I understood more, but sometime I'll draw a map. describe it to Jenn so she can draw a map. She's MUCH better at this than I am.

June 13, 2014
The following page is written entirely in French, but it's also sloppily written and scrawled and almost painful to read. It's more art than writing, but the doodles and scribbles of someone who happens to be excited and entirely too high.

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the next entry does not have a date
Have you ever had a dream so intense that you couldn't be sure it had ever stopped?

I had a day like that when I met Eleanor. I work at a university and I was supposed to be delivering a bunch of papers to one of the professors who had some kind of meeting for research. This lady is freaking crazy about her stupid staples (the professor, not Eleanor, but Eleanor is a professor too) and I had too many much stuff to carry up the stairs normally so I thought "Oh, hey, elevator is a good idea." So, I'm there and she's there and the elevator stalls.

I fucking HATE elevators.
I didn't realize I hate elevators, but I hate elevators.

I'm in this elevator and the walls seemed small and the I felt like the world was filling up with water. I felt the world grow cold and dark and the air froze in my lungs and I was drowning. There wasn't a drop of water anywhere, but I was drowning. I knew it wasn't real, but that feeling was so blistering cold. It felt like I was sixteen & dying. It was terrifying. Eleanor's pretty cool, though. I was so scared and it was amazing. I didn't know a person could feel like that, and for that little bit when I felt like the world was going to leave me I was hit with how badass it is that something can make you remember that intensely. Eleanor and I talked for a bit, and she said we could talk in her office if I was game.

I came by and talked to some guy named Richard. He's super tall and really nice. He was reading a book on quantum physics, and it made me think of you. I should have asked him who wrote it & seen if it was something you've read. Probably is. I keep finding books that make me think of you; we should camp in a library and see if we can keep from getting thrown out. Impromptu lock in=fucking awesome.

btw: Euthanatoi, pl. Euthanatos, sing.

[jamie]

6-23

So Im at the library. Not the city library - I wanted to see what it was like to be on a college campus since Im not ever actually going to go to college. Even if things turned out different I dont think I would ever actually go. I cant see the point. All these kids are in here hunched over their books and the a/c is on but sunlight is coming in the windows anyway so it feels super hot and I like reading and learning and everything but I like being able to go outside if I want to go outside too.

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OK now Im outside.

So I havent actually read a lot of physics books but I think its sweet they make you think of me. Most of what I know about science I learned from listening to my parents talk. It wasnt just my dad who was super into that stuff. My mom knows all the constellations and knows a lot about water which sounds kind of stupid when I just say it like 'MY MOM KNOWS A LOT ABOUT WATER' but theres a lot to water so its kind of like an understatement. She also knows a lot about medicine which maybe the 2 go together since humans are mostly water--

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6-24

Got interrupted by ultimate frisbee. I played it for like an hour with these guys yesterday and I still dont know what makes ultimate frisbee different from regular frisbee. Less clothes I think.

Anyway one time I asked my mom why people drown if theyre mostly water and she thought that was the funniest thing Id ever said in my life. You know how you say something sort of funny but mostly stupid so your mom has to tell the story 30 times a year after that because if you dont embarrass your kid at least every time youre out in public together people think youre a bad parent? That was how stupid that question was. I was like 6 and Im 19 now and Im pretty sure the villagers in Tasmania or wherever the hell Dar Es Salam is have heard that story like 12 times already.

Hand cramp.

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6-26

I think your super tall nice guy named Richard is the same super tall nice guy named Richard I met at Adams bookstore when I first got here. He was buying a Fitzgerald book.

!! - thats what I was telling you. I like reading all sorts of stuff but Dad had this thing about me reading fiction. He thought there was so much in the universe we still didnt know that it was a waste of time to be reading about something someone made up. We got into this big fight one time because thats totally not true. Nothing is a waste of time. All we have is time and it doesnt matter how awesome we are or how big of an impact we make on the world - everybody ends up being worm food in the end. All you can really hope for is that people will still talk about you a thousand years later but all those people are going to die eventually anyway. Nothing matters.

I still think that and Dad kind of agreed w/ me after we were done arguing. But he still would make this face if he caught me reading something someone made up. You know that dad face dads make.

What is a euthanatos?

I guess you can just tell me on Saturday.

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6-27

So I looked up "euthanatos" at the library and it said it means good death in greek. I ended up reading about the legality of euthanasia for like an hour and I think the librarian thinks Im disturbed.

WTF, Poirot?

The next two pages consist of notes Alicia took and diagrams she drew while reading about electronic alarm systems.