To Alison

alison...

i just called you but you werent home. i got the message that you had called two weeks ago from my roommate evan. old roommate evan. somehow now i am in the mood to write a letter. so im writing this just in case you dont call back. because i dont know when ill have time to write again.

things have changed radically once again since i last wrote you. i dont remember if i had my new apartment back then. but anyway, im living in a nice spacious three bedroom apartment in the western addition. i have four roommates because we turned one of our common rooms into a bedroom. meanwhile i have switched from the corporate world of esprit to a small startup company that is both more corporate and less corporate at the same time.

the company im working for is maximum information. we're a world wide web design company that is now also producing development tools for the web. it's a company that's only about thirteen months old and has about fifteen people. but because of this and because of the mad rush of all companies to get on the internet, we're also a high energy madhouse. we've developed the technology to develop fully interactive web sites. so now we're playing with and against a lot of the big players in the industry.

so its exciting and new. ive never worked for a company like this before. everyone had this attitude of comradeship. we just had our big announcement party where we announced our new development software and our company to the world. and then i was there escorting presidents and ceos. talking about the new technology and exchanging business cards. it was a huge affair considering the size of our company. we had invited about two thousand people, had free food and an open bar. eight different display stations with all these prominent companies displaying how we've put our product to work for them.

before the big event life consisted of only work and i am still only recovering. in the month of november i had not a single day off except for the week vacation i took to go back home for my five year reunion. and had that not been planned since before i even got this job, i probably would have been working then as well. we were all working 60-80 hours a week. but when everyone doing it and you all have this sense like you're trying to get something fantastic together. that youre doing this so you can rise above all the other mundane web design companies, it's not so bad. everyone used to go out to dinner together. or go to lunch. a group still goes to the gym every day around five thirty. it reminds me of when i used to be in my college theatre group. that kind of semi-cultish togetherness. striving to get something done at all costs.

but now. now that our big event is over, we're in a short lull. and i should be enjoying the peace, because it won't last for long. but it's been so long since i actually had a life, that i don't know what to do with one. ive been wanting to write, but i can't think of anything to write. i sit in front of my paint program at work, uninspired. i dont know if ive ever felt so non-alive. ive been smoking cloves trying to feel something. all my emotion seems drained. i havent been dancing in ages. sometimes i want to but i dont have the energy anymore. ive had a crush on the same two somen for the past three months. one simply didnt comment when i wrote her a really long letter trying to explain how i liked her. we just continued along with our friendship and now she has a huge crush on my friend, who is perhaps my only and best friend in this city. and the other one, though im attracted to her and can't seem to not be, simply disgusts me with her constant drunkeness, highness.

meanwhile, because of work, i havent seen any of the others who during the summer were my san francisco core circle of friends. i see my roommates. and i still like going over alex's because he's one of the only ones in this city i can have deep interesting conversations with. i have neither the time nor the will to meet new people. ive shrunken back into an introverted shell that i havent been so deeply enshrined for almost ten years.

i guess the one thing is that i have my work. work is constantly exciting and new. i discover so many things on the internet every week, i am just amazed. all my projects are seeming to revolve around the web. i want to make an exquisite corpse forum on the web where people all over the world can get together and write dada poems together. i want to do adaptive and interactive literature stories which change and adapt depending upon who is reading them. and ive redeveloped my interest in machine and digital life. there are so many exciting things that have been happening in creating evolving mutating lifeforms completely in digital space. and then the three dimensional virtual worlds keep coming out and amazing me.

so i know this is a time to do this. six months from now would be too late. a year passes and everything is different. i remember the streets and think that life was so much more alive there. yeah you suffered. you had to live in squats and work crappy jobs that paid you next to nothing, or harass tourists trying to get the change from their pocket into your hand. but that's when you felt the cold and so appreciated the warmth so much. when you had the time to explore the myriad of people in the world. following someone back to their house to get a bit of warmth and discovering this whole other life, whole other world. life is not like that for me anymore. often i miss it.

now is a time. in a year or two i expect to return to the streets. perhaps ill have a laptop computer and be programming on the road. but at least ill be on the road again travelling, experiencing, living. theres something to be said for having a warm house to come back to every night, but i think it makes us complacent, like having a television drains us of the desire to create for ourselves. sometimes its better to just do without one.

but while im here im still going to strive to be alive. to discover that which is powerful enough to keep people in one place. i think i had it in august and september, when i was learning about herbs and oils and magick. but when i lost the time, i lost all that. now i have to find it again. at least ive been reading.

so this letter had really been a letter to myself in a way, which i think the best of my letters somehow are. but i guess it not only helps to move myself through the thought processes of where i am in my life, but shows you those same things.

...time passes...paragraphs removed...

well you did call. and talking to you and melanie has had such a calming effect on my psyche. just an hour or two before you had called i had had the hugest fight i ever had with my roommates. lots of screaming and arguing and general anger. lots of issues as to why it occurred. but it made me tense. i left the house to go have dinner at mcdonalds, then went food shopping before returning to an empty house. and it was in that aftermath, of being alone in an empty house wondering and waiting for my roommates to return so we could continue our discussions in a less emotional time, that you called. but by the end, after i had talked to you for a time unnumbered and melanie the same. after all that, i had forgotten and relaxed into this wonderful peace.

it was in part some knowing that bonds of understanding still remained after so long. and though words seemed particuliarly useless talking to you (talking of things which words do not readily communicate), i feel like in some way we understood each other. we've both been to that same place where reality becomes nothing more than another point of light in a sky full of stars. and to talk about that place is nearly impossible.

after so many years it is done. i put the final paragraph of my book on paper today. i still have more to write for the last part. but everything i write from now on for the book will come before this final section. and i dont have much more to write before it anyway. im hoping to have it completely written by mid-january. maybe ill have it sone before i receive a letter from you so i can send it off with this letter.

anyway, it's strange to think its done. its one of those things ive just been doing for so long. maybe now ill go back and start doing a zine again. not that i dont have enough projects im working on already. but its nice to have some things that dont relate to computers.

once again im writing a letter to you as a rememdy for non-writing. though id like to write something, my mind is blank. that dullness of non-living is still with me. only ive gotten used to it again. its been about three weeks since i last wrote anything in this letter. probably three weeks since ive written anything at all (not true, two weeks ago i tried to start a journal again--failed).

so one of my new years resolutions was not to smoke cloves for the year. no longer using that as a resort. but life does once again seem drab. im pushing forward with work, doing some side-projects on my own, still work related. i still havent gotten anything more done with the book, though i did finally buy a pair of bongos, so now i have drums to play. (preparation for the mardi gras). and ive been slowly reading books. so i have been doing things, i guess. it just doesn't feel like i am. (im not in the mood to write and this is too jumbled and depressing. maybe some other day).

once again weeks pass. its now two and a half weeks before mardi gras. i leave in a week and a half.....

....meanwhile still havent finished my book. too busy, too lazy. whatever but i still plan to have it done before mardi gras. so this weekend and next weekend ill be working on it. and that exquisite corpse site i was talking about. i want to have that mostly done before i leave.

so last night i wandered around this virtual reality with a guy in alaska. it was pretty cool. we were both new to this world called worlds chat, which is a three dimensional world on the internet with sounds and people. its mainly a social environment. a space station out orbiting the earth with a whole bunch of people wandering around chatting. with different rooms that have different themes. but there are a few cool secret rooms you can discover.

but still. strange to be walking around in cyberspace with this guy in alaska. we actually walked around exploring, with me following him sometimes and he following me other times. and we would go commenting on the decor of the room. or about other people wandering around. it was a strange experience. especially because when i first entered the world i felt very shy and awkward talking to people. and even still, i get kind of embarassed when i bump into people. its all not real, and yet it is.

then i discovered this other world called alpha world, which is another three dimensional world with lots of people milling about. except in this world, you can build things. your own house. trees, rocks. and then other people can experience them. and you still can talk to people and all that except that alpha world is a lot more detailed. a lot more real. it looks like a real three dimensional model of a world. worlds chat is almost cartoonish compared to it.

strange and bizarre. and such is life. which makes me more interested in peter carolls idea of being able to shift realities. and fully accept the reality as your own reality. but also being able to switch to another reality just as easy. harder than it seems. it is very easy to let realities get muddled. to have belief from one reality seep over into another reality. they say kids have problems separating television reality from standard reality. actually most people seem to. but then most people dont really treat it as a separate reality system. they look at it more as an extension to their own reality. which is when belief systems get muddled. i was just thinking that with the emersion of full virtual realities, it'll become more and more important to be able to maintain several completely separate realities and belief systems. one of the reasons i want to study more chaos macgick.

muse@musespace.com