I’m driving the BMW to Trader Joe’s. Beth is next to me. I notice that the experience of the car is transformed by who is handling it, much that of a gun or violin. Here the vehicle is purely utilitarian, getting us to where we need to go. I don’t care what it looks like or what it is and I only think about it in terms of how the BMW is not like my own car.

We’re talking about relationships and online dating. I haven’t given Beth the backstory of the avatar, so the things I say apparently horrify her on some level. I haven’t encountered many people who are comfortable with the rhetoric of the quirkyalone. Listening to myself, I know it sounds like I have excluded the entire world save one person.

I’m pushing the shopping cart at Trader Joe’s and reality has gone wobbly for me. I start to lose focus on where I am and suddenly I am in several different stores at once. Beth is asking me something about the grocery list, which has suddenly become indecipherable, the scrawled prescription from a mad chef. I answer noncommittally as the aisles telescope and emotions tumble down the shelves.

We manage to collect the ingredients for guacamole and hummus, dips which Beth insists must never be purchased, always made by hand. Later she would demonstrate her Shaolin avacado cutting style. She has resolved to eat an avacado a day while in California. I also found the frozen chocolate dipped bananas I had been craving.

The ride back is just like the ride there, only in reverse. Which is to say, completely unfamiliar.

And then I waited for what I
wanted to know
And when I did not receive what
I felt was my due
I simply just did that which I could
I created it.

Now I know what this means.

Thank you.

I have not been so surprised by a film since Fight Club. Hancock is about superheroes the way that Fight Club is about punching. This impression should of course be taken with a grain of salt as the film really spoke to me on some other level. Your mileage may vary.

1. The Fountain
2. There Will Be Blood
3. Batman Begins
4. Ghostbusters
5. Barton Fink
6. Old Boy
7. Hancock
8. WALL-E
9. CQ
10. Iron Man

I’m putting this profile out there as a kind of beacon for the person who is looking for me. A single white stone forming a path leading to me.

I will continue as though you are that one person.

Hello, (your name goes here). I am overjoyed to finally meet you. I have been searching for you for years. I’ve seen you flickering in the corner of my eye, in dreams, in smiles, always ephemeral and fleeting. But now, here you are. You are beautiful and extraordinary.

I want to know everything that happened to you up until this moment. I want you to tell me what you’ve figured out about life. All the mistakes and triumphs. I will tell you my story as well. This will all take some time, so I figure we can spread it out across many conversations over coffee, in the car, at dinner, in bed, on airplanes, in sofa forts, after movies, during arguments, and even during our silences.

We both came all this way. There will always be distances to cross, but I’m committed to cross them with you.

Let’s not date. Let’s not “be friends first and see where things go.” What if we talk about what we truly want out of a partner and then work to make that happen? Let’s have an adventure! Let us be extraordinary lovers and constant friends. Why not?

I won’t give you any disclaimers and I expect none in return. It is true, things happened to us in the past, threads that wove us into what we are now. I want to know you, but I never want to understand you. I never want to figure you out, if that is even possible. I want to create a relationship where we are constantly exploring who we are to each other.

I’ve been looking all over for you, but now I need to stay still in one place and wait for you.

Please don’t be too long.

Find me.

Well done. You’re almost there.

I am writing this message from the past, beginning at the end. At this moment, it is an anachronism, but it will slowly slip backward in time. Though many may read it, I write it only for you. It is the final beacon.

Thank you for your persistence. If things have gone according to plan, you will have enjoyed yourself. Though many may have played the game (or thought they were playing), only one person could ever win. And that’s you. I created all of this for you, my dear.

By now you know what the prize is and you must truly want it. Are you ready?

If you are, contact me and ask The Question.

This end is the beginning of everything.

I must resist the foils. Shall I become hideous to them? Shall I construct a bullwark? I need a lefttennant with my best interests in mind. A guard against the foil. That is what is always missing from the scene: A friend.

I can still feel your wake. Damn it, I’m right here! I’m standing as still as I can, given my shifting nature. Where are you? I’ve learned how to track so many trails. I’ve learned how to track *me*! I’m not present and I never will be. But I am focused like light passing through a diamond. I’m that sparkle in the moment, even as I move through many shifting dreams where clocks are useless.

Find me.

I saw her again, the avatar. Garbed as a swashbuckler and lovely beyond reason. In the company of the dread pirate, a man I come to find was a knave of the blackest stripe.

The pattern appears and the players are drawn along its shattered axes. The foil shows herself, drawn to me, as she always is. I’m so fucking weak. Lonliness sapping away all my brave plans.

But now my understanding of the pattern is more complete. I should be able to recognize the cycle immediately when it starts again, not halfway through the dance, when it is too late.

Where are you?
I can’t find you.
I’m going to start calling to you, but I don’t know if you can hear me where you are.
I don’t even know your name.
I call you Elysia in the stories because I think you are wonderful.
I’m starting to recognize your face because I mistake other people for you.
Where are you?
I’m not sure where to look anymore; all the spaces have grown so thin.
So I will let you know where I am.
I will say your name and you will know me when you hear it.
Please hear me.

The airplane is the epitome of safety, order and restraint.
Everything designed to induce calm and minimize contact.
Other passengers apologize for touching me, ashamed of the slightest nudge that briefly bridges a gap.
But I want to be jostled; I want their fingerprints on me.
I look out the window and all the clouds are fucking.
Couples glomming together,
Threesomes tumbling through the atmosphere,
Some of them on dragons.
And I want out of the capsule.
I want to go where it is wet and uncertain.
Inside the window, we are rows of silent worlds, arranged like eggs.
We acknowledge each other like the blurred faces in the periphery of dreams.
We are in transition.
We are being taken.
No one mentions our mutual fate, as though words would cause the worlds to crack and burst, blending together like the clouds outside.
We have nothing to hold but our breath.

I am gripped by a spiritual shuddering, caught inside my own wake.
If I would resist less, make my soul an aetheric arrow, flow upstream,
I would find Me.
A Me surfing the crest of Time.
A Me moving so fast it strips the paint off stars.
A Me that is already There because it itself is the destination.
A Me with liquid, hungry boundaries.
I would embrace that Me, pull its lips to my ear and finally hear what I’ve been trying to say all this time.
But right now I am a pail of water in a steel box:
Passenger 10C on a carefully prescribed arc,
Moving faster than I ever have while sitting completely still.
Three buttons give me the power to summon
A tiny sun, a tiny wind, or a tiny repose.
To see, to feel and to dream with the seatbelt securely fastened, small and safe.

Hidden somewhere ahead of me is a
Flickering matrix of dials, maintaining my fate.
They taught me that complex machines were required to yoke destiny.
Without buttons and dials the plane could land in Xanadu, missiles could land on the Civil War, and I could become anyone.
The gauges were necessary to measure progress.
So I bought into the buttons and the dials.
And I bought them with my blood.
An umbilical snapped, memory faded and I unlearned that ultimate potential, life in all directions, chaos, is easy.
Anywhere and Anywhen slide loose behind a thin amniotic membrane where my body used to breathe water and my soul used to breathe…used to breathe…
Where my soul just used to Breathe.

Outside the window, the clouds form the angular logos of their new corporate sponsors.
The people flying the plane weren’t just taking us,
They were taking everything.
Frantically, I reach out and press a fourth button I hadn’t noticed before and I summon a tiny point of contact.
A woman arrives and asks “Can I help you?”
I say “You can do more than that: You can get your hands dirty with me. Get me under your fingernails. You can stop lying and expecting me to lie back. You can drink my tongue and every other part of me and I will do the same for you. We can walk naked and give everything we see a new name. And don’t apologize if you end up killing me; I was made to explode and make a mess and stick to everything.
“Barring that, you can show me where they’ve hidden my sun, my wind and my dreams. I’ve checked way too much baggage onto this flight, so I know they can’t be here. While you’re at it, you can take back all the dials because I’m not measuring up, I’m going Up.
“Barring that I’ll proceed to one of the four exits (the nearest of which may be behind me) and get off the fucking plane.”
MAYDAY EJECT EJECT MAYDAY EJECT EJECT
…
She sits down next to me.
Her hair is not red – Somehow that’s okay.
She pulls out a dog-eared copy of The Little Prince.
I know what pages she has marked.
“First time flowing?” she asks.
“Yes, yes it is.”
She holds my hand and my heart although they both stain her.
“We’re going to slide up and through the plane now,” she says.
I nod.
There is a splash.
I stop holding on to my breath.