Then I heard Hitler’s voice saying, “Nein, Nein, Nein!” Well, I wasn’t in his body, at this point, so it wasn’t me saying that; I didn’t see how it could be Hitler, either, since you had to be good—and connected to good in the future (where only good survives), so it must have been someone after Hitler existing in the past perfect and or the future tense. Whoever it was, I concluded that they didn’t want me to do something—although I wasn’t sure what that was.
So I asked myself what had changed in the recent past and I slowed down my breathing so that i could notice subtle changes in my breathing and or my pulse—and I had my answer! All that made sense, given my physiological response, was that I had to stop writing love poetry to Alex. Now, I doubt that Alex was using Hitler’s voice unless she’d heard me use it before, but it was more likely that she had some translation of it that meant the same thing to her. The translation simply evoked the same response.
Who’s discovering who here? Alex said—and AOC repeated it—and then I repeated it, and thought about how to answer the question, and what I could learn about the people that asked the question. I guess Alex was worried that she was going to be depressed if she allowed me to convince her that she had a chance at the presidency, which was understandable. She also had a boyfriend (who I knew about) and, I figured, my advances were making her uncomfortable—especially since, technically speaking, my advances could only end in sorrow as long as Alex was with someone else—even if she jumped from him to me.
But I wanted to continue to write love poetry—the poems were important, and I liked it, so I figured I’d have to be more discrete about my feelings if I wanted to keep doing it without alienating the person I wanted to be my boss. Enough of that, then; how was AOC doing? I hoped they weren’t going through the same misfortune that I went through—thinking, for example, that everybody was against me—trying to snuff my artistic light and the life that connected me to both the past and future—my orphan self, so to speak. But maybe society had changed such that you could survive making art in your twenties instead of rushing everything and wondering how on earth you were going to be yourself and do something besides make art.
AOC and I were connected across time, however, by a particular volume or a pressure that made it a struggle to function—so, no doubt, even if AOC had the time and the money, in the future, to devote herself to her craft, they would experience other forms of hardship that would have pushed the both of us to the limit. It’s a ranch house—in my ward—which I interpreted as AOC saying that, in the event that things got rough or we got too old, and we couldn’t climb the stairs, we’d live in a ranch house, so, presumably AOC was prepared to commit long term (this would be a marriage of hearts and minds) and by their ward I could only assume that there was another ward out there that they’d been forced from or refused—probably a single’s ward, since I’d experienced being forced from the singles’ ward to the family ward—surrounded, then, by families as opposed to available young women. Don’t know where all the women my age went—everybody there was much older than me if they weren’t a kid, but, I assumed (since Christianity is like this) that everybody was expected to marry, and, if you didn’t, you were treated badly (and left the church).