LETTERS 

The writer found himself working late at night, mind working furiously, in a hospital. He admitted it was one of the worst jobs. He was embarrassed and amused by it at the same time. It was, he figured, the lowest job attainable in anyone's market. He was surrounded by a swarm of women who chattered between long silences. The writer sat at someone else's desk and wondered how he'd gotten into this predicament. All the past now seemed to be squandered time. He thought there was a kind of development but if he'd done it over he would have lit himself up at any early age and burned out by 30.

At the lowest job attainable everything seemed an illusion. But, then, the door would open at midnight and the writer would leave and when the night air fell around his face he was alone and free.

What is this, the writer asked, a crux? Since he was a boy he observed himself. He was proud of this capability. He never called it a castle. He never called it an authoritative name at all. If he condemned the 'tower' wouldn't it be condemning itself? He felt that its choices were made outside of its own making. Perhaps even the element of imagination and dreams were mere manipulations of a tribal sort. He didn't want any moral quandaries about these questions. Perhaps it is, after all, another tool in the kit.

In the larger sense the intelligence had become maniacal; it could devise theory and oppression. The fact that it was beginning to resist itself was a clue. Yes, he admitted, the intellect will torture the soul in hell but also, the soul in hell will try and grab the intellect to get it burning too. It was nearly physiological. He had met a few who described to him the physiological effects of this. And when the writer showed them the intellect they would get extraordinarily angry. Their whole feeling force leapt out ready to stab him. The writer concluded that those in hell are destructive but they could also be generous and morally righteous.

The problem was how to live with a continual barrage of passions, one after the other. Ah, the people are meditating now, the writer noted. Yes, the emotions are detaching from the images to relieve the pressure. But, the writer admitted that the pressures were real enough. There was the continual politicization of every human being. The stripping down of any innocent faith, a kind of moral indolence. The writer had been morally indolent. He had been stupefied before mass events that didn't have rhyme or reason to them. Break-ups of immense proportions. The threat they'd throw a nuke into one's favorite hole. Death itself, de-sacralized. Class warfare. As the writer witnessed the debacle he discovered a horrible self-image. He discovered the inscrutable fears and obstructions. He discovered the humiliations as if the demand was for a man's good, natural self to be buried. It was combined with an obedience to the mask.

There were times when his youth was not real to him. It was restless energies made into guilt and humiliation. Ah, sad youth.

David Eide
July 30, 1999
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