September 9, 2021

Dear Dr. Meyer:

In the spirit of writing first, editing later, here is some writing I did this morning, while at a reunion for Greenwood music camp. I awoke with a wonderful dream, and then had some thoughts based on it.

I hope you are well.

I am headed to Martha's Vineyard on Thursday, back next Tuesday. I could perhaps come over and do a little project for you on Wednesday afternoon.

There was an article in the New York Times that I read very late last night, that was of interest to me and may be of interest to you. I include the link, and if you can't access it I'll send the text:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/11/health/nursing-homes-schizophrenia-antipsychotics.html

****

The fundamental tragedy of manic depression is that the person experiencing it does not know he is sick; but that others do not realize he is trying to heal.

In all my delusional activities: trying to bring black homeless men into the Bohemian club; concerning myself with the fate of Russia, trying all along to understand the causes and consequences of the first world war; and even believing for a time that I was the hidden Tsar of Russia-----I was enacting upon the world the healing I was unable to enact upon my invisible self: reconciliation.

We maniacs do not know we are sick because we humans do not have eyes on ourselves. We do not have, like a lantern strung afront a bowsprit, eyes on stalks facing backwards to our faces. We see the world; we see the sickness of the world; we abhor the sickness of the world; and we wish to (most sickly) cast out that sickness, or (less sickly) bring together the disparate and shattered parts of the world to our best capacity.

We are facing an immediate eschaton, and in order to see it, foreshortening is required. The ultimate theory of physics that is revealed to us is bound to have holes; our view of how the world works in its hidden ways seems apt but is full of holes;; and left to our own devices, a maniac will keep on going until he falls into one of those holes.

The hardest thing of all is to realize you are sick; and that done, to realize how sick you are.

*

A dream.

Word has gotten to me that there were some strange things in Uncle Tod’s remaining things.

There is, for instance, a Greek vase that turns out to be made of plastic.

In a drawer (I am now seeing it) there are white boxes filled, they say, with plastic explosives; but when I open one up it turns out to be filled with razor blades shaped like arrowheads.

At the front of a sort of carnival or gypsy caravan wagon, there is a TV screen with Eugene Auh. It seems to be black and white, but I can see that he has blond highlights (presumably dyed) and hazel eyes, insothat he looks to be of mixed parentage, or one of those Baltis from Ladakh or Afghanistan. During the video he is occasionally smoking a cigarette, and when he emerges in real life, with a whole cohort of Korean men dressed in dark suits, they are all making great and ultimately friendly merriment about me, and my family. He is the honcho to whom one gives respect.

As we caper about the room in increasing merriment, among the detritus and packing crates of Uncle Tod’s estate, I say to myself, and perhaps to others: I will write this comedy.

Eugene walks up to the vase and shatters it, and now one can bend the pieces and see how it is plastic. I wonder if any of my other vases are plastic.

As I get more comfortable with the whole proceeding, I emerge from the bathroom briefly naked, but I do not feel humiliated at all.

Then we’re out on the street, headed for the Bohemian club. Suddenly I stop and cry: Uncle Tod, of all people, is not here! I know he is dead, but I also know he should be here. And I miss him terribly.

When we get to the club, we are coming in a back door, and Katie Boyd and others are there to meet us (she is no longer on crutches, {which she was only for a brief time}).

In the crowd of Koreans, there are now women in black dresses, and I briefly wonder whether they are to be admitted. Is it a Thursday night? First it occurs to me that it is not, and that we are having one of these rentals of the club. But then I see, when we get to where we are going, that it is a Thursday night, but that we are in another part of the club from the main Thursday night proceedings.

We are in an auditorium, quite a bit larger than the Jinks Theater, with blue stadium seats rising under a netting going up to the ceiling. All I see is a stage that seems to be on the side. And I see Floyd’s white mane, and I see a group of bass players that should (and perhaps does) include John Lancelles. And then I am introduced to another fellow, who I do not recognize, and whom, I am told, has come here to meet me.

All of Tunerville is filtering in. Jason Pyszkowski is at his genial best, not sneering at me or ignoring me as he did that last summer. (There is no sign of Evan Craves, but I will think of him when I wake up.)

In a corner of the stage area {was this the area from which I watched that disastrous Tunerville meeting?}, clustered behind the same blond-wood upright piano I saw the bass players behind, is a group of people observing a sharpshooter. I do not see what type of gun he has, but it is a gentle gun. They will toss a clay coin in gravitationally impossible loops in the air, and he will ask them how they would like it done. And I’m not sure if I see the coin shatter before I wake up.

*

I awake with a sense of what needs to be done. To write Walter; to go back to the Club (perchance to join again, were I to be allowed?). To gather the broken threads of my life. All the understanding above emerged from this. I do not focus on the eschaton, where I am or am not a Tsar (seeking to obtain power to heal the world that I do not have). To go back to the ancient wounds and reconcile.

The three things I wish to do, amid a life of music: write the file-finding app I first dreamed of all those years ago; then a little demo of my keyboard punning ideas (or perhaps that first, it being simpler); and then the social network that brings people together.

But in that last there is ambition, and the idea is full of holes. How would it work? How do the tendrils of connection reach across brokenness?

I can start by learning Swift and Macintosh development, since that is new and perhaps, one hopes, interesting. And I should like to learn Unix better too.