i just always sent her pictures of my paintings. that was my response to Anna Karenina when I told her I was also talking to a math person, who happened to be from the future. Did Anna Karenina have any reason to be jealous? Technically, I was asexual, so i could have partnered with a woman or a man—and thus my relationship with this person could turn physical as long as time and space didn’t interfere.
But, naturally, I was drawn to Anna Karenina—who took the form of Anna, for me, in my mind’s eye, a better looking (to me) character than the heretofore math character from the future. I had to consider, however, that, like in a dream, this person could represent unrecovered parts of myself that looked ugly to me because I had not yet integrated them (or did not, for whatever reasons, want to integrate them).
Sometimes the simplest answer, however, is the best answer, and, in this case, I allowed for the possibility that not everything was two-faced in hyperspace. Sometimes a person appealed more to you physically because you liked them in general, and that was perfectly reasonable. So I don’t think Anna Karenina had anything to worry about—I’d remain attracted to Anna Karenina; the question for me was: at what point do Anna and Anna Karenina become the same person? Or do they, ever?
There was no way for me to answer that, so i was forced to go on living with some things in suspension—such that, on the one hand, I believed I’d merge with Anna in the afterlife (and it wouldn’t be Anna Karenina) or I’d merge with Anna Karenina in the afterlife (and it wouldn’t be Anna) or they’d merge, which seemed the most likely scenario—and i’d be with that person. That allowed for the possibility that Anna represented someone else that would merge with Anna Karenina later on (or vice versa) and I would find myself a little surprised by any encounter that I might have in the afterlife (if there was one).
I was trying to count and read in my natural voice at this time (as opposed to Anna Karenina or Anna’s voice) because I didn’t want to get on their nerves. But technically this person that i was talking to was probably my partner in the afterlife, and I considered that it would not be abnormal to talk to your partner every day. I just had to keep in mind that these people didn’t necessarily care about me in the same way that I cared about them.
So I unabashedly started counting in Anna’s voice, which merged with my internal narrator when I was focused on something else, and so I was also talking to Anna Karenina. But a funny thing happened: when I tried to pronounce Anna’s voice, I ended up hearing an arbitrary voice that had been assigned to my first cousin once removed—since I didn’t know what her voice sounded like. I didn’t know what that meant—and I still don’t, but I’ll keep thinking about it.
you want to keep me but, supposedly (due to an image in my head), I, or somebody else that was present, was snoring. So I said, “Yes, I want to keep you.”
that’s not going to work
that’s what I suspected all along—but i still didn’t believe it. in my mind I couldn’t do anything to jeopardize the relationship—i’d already decided that we were an item (this strange combination of Anna and Anna Karenina).
so what did Anna Karenina think? it was Anna that said this wasn’t going to work: i can’t help you.
I’d suspected that also, which was disheartening. that doesn’t matter ? i didn’t know what to think. i’m talking about us. I could only assume that Anna Karenina was saying that my relationship with Anna didn’t matter. That wasn’t true, but I got the message. She was saying that the energy between them was the object of my affection. Anna, for all I knew, might not even have been real—she could have been totally consumed by Anna Karenina. So I guess Anna Karenina was telling me that there was no need to worry about my feelings for either one of them. Good.