i was tuning into AOC and various things were passing through my head but i couldn’t make much sense of what was happening—something about wolf-son, healthcare—a lot about healthcare, actually, and then she said, “i don’t mean to ignore you; so i got to wondering: what if AOC was thinking about things that were going on with her live-in lover? It all mattered, even if she was sending me stuff that pretty much needed to be translated to be understood.
you understand it all she said, you’re at peace with God and that might’ve been true. But she also said: “you don’t need me,” which, i don’t know, might’ve been true right now—but then again I needed her to write this book, and that’s something that’s important to me, even if this wasn’t necessarily the answer that she wanted to hear—so i translated this into more flattering language and told her she was both my muse and my connection to a benevolent future. Benevolent? and yes, i had to agree: no future was acceptable if it didn’t breed good will.
you’re really on top of it and i didn’t think you would show up she wondered, at that point, if i was using her, or if i planned to use her to get rich and famous—which didn’t make a lot of sense, since, if we ever met, i’d more than likely have to be rich and famous already—maybe not too rich, but a little rich, since, i imagine i’d be selling paintings or books or some creative project—it’s not like i was going to run for Congress and try to do something that I wasn’t meant or supposed to be doing.
I’d choke if i did. Any time you’re choking up or thinking so much it’s affecting your performance, then, in my experience, i’ve come to realize that means you’re not doing something you were meant for or supposed to be doing. Your subconscious is protesting what, for most of us, is a waste of time.
I’ll sue! i think i must have missed the first part of that sentence but i had to wonder—for the sake of an advocate, if that meant she was going to sue me for using her as my muse—she did appear in my thoughts daily. i’m not sure, however, if pregnancy is an option and i’d kind of expected her to say as much—but maybe that was the right thing to do, since I’d probably wind up spending all my time trying to get them fed, clean, and off to sleep. That wasn’t the future i imagined for myself. i wanted somebody else to do all the work. the important thing, i told myself, is that they are loved—that they feel loved and, also, they feel safe.
we do things, sometimes, without asking and i agreed that happens often enough: sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t so that’s life. you never really know what is going to happen, but you could make very good guesses that stood up to theory and experiment that kept us on the right track for ages, until some other breakthrough rears its lovely head. i’m not asking about you; i’m asking about him! so maybe AOC got a little confused and thought that i was her unconscious mind trying to get her closer to the truth and, as such, she was thinking of her live-in lover instead of me—no matter how much she might’ve been talking to me at a future time—but i inferred, too, that she agreed: in order to make things work, i had to make a name for myself—even if i was to become or turn out to be the next Vincent Van Gogh, it would become or turn out to be too little to late (barring the advent of an afterlife, or, simply, someone else) because there was nothing external that was going to bring us together.
She said that was frustrating, and i acknowledged this admission. i considered the possibility then that i was already committing a form of adultery—that i was already a part of a most unpleasant betrayal. That’s because we were talking to each other informally, as if we were already an item—and trying to make out our future together. But, as i mentioned before, i’d changed. I now believed that we should look out for love when it’s not there, just in case we discover that yes, there is someone out there that we can let into our lives and grow closer to, closer and closer until we go too far and the affair dissolves, or closer and closer until we realize that life, at that time, felt like a breeze.