“You want me to be like you,” I said, in my voice, to the future me—where me could simply mean the person that I would be if I hadn’t vetoed various parts of myself for any number of reasons. That me, then, was everything that I could be, but cannot be, and, as such, they exist in the future. I was talking, then, to any number of people that may or may not have had any knowledge of me in the future—be it a family member and or someone that liked my art work and or someone I simply identified with.
I realized in a moment, however, that I hadn’t said that; I hadn’t thought of anything—so I could’ve been listening to Hitler or I could have been listening to “me” in the future. I had to consider, then, if I had the ability to carry on a conversation—or if my telepathic skills amounted mostly to leaving messages like email—and perhaps I wasn’t capable of having a conversation, and me was. I quickly determined that I must be talking to me—because I could tune into Hitler, but he never directed his voice to me personally. If he said, “You want me to be like you,” then he was talking about someone else, and I hadn’t been tuned in to the whole conversation. I tried talking back to me:
“I want to be like you,” I said. “That’s the whole point—you’re everything that the business of living took away from me.”
Me got angry, then, and wanted to know how I smoked—and, for a time, thought racist thoughts, albeit it without my consent.
“I started out with the best of intentions,” I said. “But my thoughts didn’t belong to me—I got my signals crossed and confused the person I am with the person that I needed to be in order to play the part I played.”
“I have to go,” me said. “My mom is calling me.”
I wondered, then, if I represented, or passed on information, to me’s mom. In some ways I was me’s mom, since we shared a space that existed before me was born.
I should note that I could, apparently, talk to me when I wasn’t on a trip—and, apparently, now that I recognized the sound of Hitler’s voice, I could communicate with Hitler by projecting his voice in the present—when I wasn’t inside his head. So let’s get this straight: in the past, when I was tripping inside Hitler’s head, my thoughts sounded like Hitler’s voice unless I did something to change that—like speak in the sound of my voice, which was my way of talking to me in the future, and me’s way of talking back to me. In the present I also talked to Hitler using his voice—but the voice I heard inside my head wasn’t Hitler thinking thoughts like it was in the past—it was a superposition of voices that came from both the past and the future that were good voices—they were the voices of people that lived in the past and or were shaped by the goodness of the past that I connected with in the present, such as wonderful and mentally precocious artists and writers—which I could speak in general to by projecting my voice and (in theory) individually by projecting the known voice of an uncle, for example, or someone else, whose voice I recognized.
I should note, however, that the more I communicated with Hitler and or read his thoughts, the better I got at talking to me—someone that was vetoed by all the people around him (or her) and was forced to be themselves, unlike Hitler, who vetoed all the people around him and was forced to be something that he was not—as if he didn’t even exist—or, at the very least, he was a long way from being himself. It was important, then, to make time for reflection and, perhaps, a little silence as we tuned in to those that left us messages and left messages for those that were talking to us. I usually collected my thoughts—and or was there for my thoughts—when reading before going to bed. If I heard Hitler’s voice, then I knew that someone righteous from the past was talking to me—and, if I heard my voice, I could’ve been listening to Hitler or me—a difference I would have to learn to recognize based on the logic of what I was hearing.