it’s not a manifesto—I didn’t threaten anybody indeed, the wires got crossed there. Actually, my default narrator said that about me, about us, me and him; then I repeated it in Ursula’s voice because I didn’t know if the statement came from an email getting unpacked out of my neck and shoulders, or if, on the other hand, I was trying to tell her, specifically, that I never threatened anybody when I write. At least not physically. But, truth be told, I set traps for people to fall into all the time—I was practically setting traps nonstop—I did it simultaneously whenever I did pretty much anything. That doesn’t mean that, in my past, I made mistakes and got things a little haywire; but people, in general, know that we’re not perfect—and what counts is whether or not you vacated your bad self and accepted the help of other people; in other words, did you get your mind right, and, at this point, do you love both yourself and others? Did you repent? Did you have a change of mind?
That kind of thing resonates with people, and, frankly, I used to punish myself so much that it was ridiculous: I couldn’t do anything. At one point I was on 2 anti-depressants, a sleep pill, and six mg of risperidone a day, which, if you don’t know anything about it, is a lot. I couldn’t stop punishing myself. But, with the help of others, help that I had to let into my life, I got better. I wondered, sometimes, if Ursula, when she was growing up, also set traps for people. Technically you don’t need to set traps for people to become a political savior—which Ursula was. You can simply let your actions speak for themselves. But, as anyone would have to admit, it’s funny to watch somebody fall from a safe distance—a distance that cannot be helped, as long as nobody gets hurt. I wasn’t hurting anybody—I was just giving them a dose of their own medicine.
So what had happened? (and it happened almost overnight—or over the course of a couple nights, something like that.) Now, i don’t want to call my shot or anything—but, unless I was getting things a little backward, which is a possibility—telepathic communications are not perfect, I was hearing a call. The call to shape my country, to bring it forward, into the future, where I existed, which, I assure you, is a far better place than the world that exists outside my little personal region of infinite space. You might think—wow, who the hell do you think you are, and, how is that going to happen? I wonder those things, too. But I paid attention, and there was little room for doubt: i was bound and determined to run this country—to do something about how awful it is; now, granted, Ursula, God willing, is going to do most of the heavy lifting—she’s going to open the door, or, blow it up, i guess, if nobody answers, and then, once we were inside, I was going to change what it meant to work a job. I was going to give everybody a stipend that they could live off of—so that they’d never be tortured by boredom. You simply wouldn’t have to work unless you wanted more money than you needed to have a family, a house, two cars, and heath insurance. I was going to make that happen.
Pipe dreams? Not really; i wasn’t going to allow people to horde wealth anymore—to do their best to deny the melting pot; to fuel both nationalism and fascist beliefs. That’s because I know what it’s like: when I refused, for a time, the kind of interpersonal relationships that I needed to survive—when I left my home, that is, I discovered exactly how impossible it is to live in this county—I was fucking reduced to a state of great pain and suffering, a state that did not permit me to take care of myself, much less raise a modest family, and pursue happiness on my own terms.
Was Ursula mad at me, now? Was she threatened? Did she think I was going to use her to become the president? Ursula thought I was fucking crazy—at least for a moment, when, that is, I acknowledged what she, in fact, had been trying to tell me—that the path I am supposed to follow is the inverse of the path I am exposed to when darkness reigns. That all of this—this book, everything, etc.—was about maximizing my potential and taking control of what, by any standard, has become a shitty country, a country that cannot survive in the future, and, without trying to sound too megalomanic and or sarcastic, I was from the future, and I was going to show people what the future was like. It was a hell of a lot better than the country I lived in, and, although the country I would inherit, upon my rise to power, would, theoretically speaking, be loads better than what it was at this point, the final days of fascism, of a country composed, of, given enough Pervitin (the methamphetamines that Germans took like candy, back when the drug was considered a useful antidepressant) shameless and two-fold cruel Nazis.
Suddenly Ursula backed off for a bit. A saturated silence—a rest note, filled in the void; it was a pregnant response; but I think, ultimately, I was winning her over. She was beginning to see me not just as a creepy schizophrenic that tried to break up her and her boyfriend in loony land, but, on the contrary, a man deserving her utmost attention and respect. I was beginning to see myself in this way, and i knew that, from this day forward, I needed to live my life as if I was the president already, and everything I did would be scrutinized such that my traps might not be enough. I also needed to be the good, loving person that had fully integrated with himself and his family, and that wanted, ultimately, to integrate with his country—the people in it, so that they too could afford to be thin again—to be sane again—to be themselves without being driven by a cruel and meaningless system to make themselves whole, to “make things right,” by overeating, drinking alcohol, and or treating other people like shit—like they were beneath you.