mmdcccxlvi

Conversations,
Needs and
Needing a
Conversation

Simple enough said,
I suppose, but with
no words comes no
meaning—less than
nothing, no doubt;
cuz what’s meaning
within a singular sem-
i-conscious mostly bar-
ren chamber unless the
echoes get to pass be-
yond the great wall of
mystery? To point,
your pal, whom I’ve
never met until now,
furthermore only to-
night ever having
spoken with him
a first time (Re-
member? You ans-
wered the phone,
then promptly
handed it to him
for whatever rea-
son.). I believe that
he said more to me
on that phone in less
than five minutes than
you have in three years
of being on the same line
most every one of those
days at least once. I ev-
en gleaned from this guy,
your friend, a fairly sub-
stantial bit of info, most
specifically about you.
And he wasn’t making
a presentation, mind
you. He was simply off-
ering a bit of your local
news, drinking a beer,
teaching me a new
language (well, an
apt phrase or two,
in any case), yet I
barely even under-
stood a word he said.

I wish you more than
anything in the world
lightheartedness and
great health and happi-
ness. Because these are
what I now lack thanks to
these months of disconnect,
or, rather, non-connection.
There is so much of what
I had assumed was quite
the contrary, as I still re-
call and cannot beat the
mysticism out of that sad
burden. But upon a redir-
ected rendering, it seems
there was less than a big
zero transpiring via that
perfectly taut line that al-
ways runs from you to me
and me to you, no matter that
you exist, if at all, at the op-
posite end of the planet. A
straight line, mind you. It
will always remain a mystery.
But that was the problem, real-
ly. One always wants to know
at least something. Or per-
haps that is just me. You
were the most interesting of
them all, and yet you never
had any interest whatsoever.
Did you? In me. In life. In
leading an Interesting life. or
even in those bursts of plea-
sure I’d have the pleasure of
witnessing on a few occasions.
To me, they were and always
will be genuine miracles. My-
story miracles. Each caused
my own pleasure to bubble
up and burst forth on most
every mere occasion. These
things happened. And I sup-
pose I created a fiction a-
round them. But man,
what I would not give
for even a singular such
similar moment. An ex-
plosion. Of joy. Two
things which one might
have a difficult time
putting together into
one, when the words
are said out loud, I sup-
pose. But it is just a fan-
tasy, like those three years,
I suppose. They were, if they
were, and it would be, if it
could be again, after all, ex-
plosions across an ocean. A
big, beautiful, goddamned o-
cean. I don’t know how much
more specific I can get, sitting
here with my head wagging back
and forth between an empty cell-
phone and the shiveringly vast Pacific.