Dearest Rachel –
I probably did myself no favors by stepping on the scale last night. Ever since pulling that calf muscle on Friday, I’ve been relatively indolent, at least on a physical level. In a way, that’s to be expected; I don’t make a habit of working out over the weekends as a general rule, and I’m not quite as meticulous about what I eat, either (although I have done the occasional ‘intermittent fast’ over one weekend or another, this definitely hasn’t been one of those weekends). So, while I have been pleased to note that I’ve been able to stay below 250 pounds for nearly a week (which I meant to write a celebratory letter to you once I made it for a full week, as I’ve been dancing around that barrier for the better part of nearly two months), I’ve also been watching as I’ve been slowly creeping back up to that level. I wasn’t even particularly surprised when last night’s weigh-in had me a half-pound over the limit, even as I was disappointed in the fact that this delays that celebration for a while to come.
At the same time, I found myself surprised this morning to discover just how much energy my internal processing unit can burn even as my body lies in virtual stasis. It’s not so much a matter of “what dreams there be” – although there is that, too – as much as realizing the power required to plaster the inside of my mind with the moving wallpaper that are these dreams. It’s like how, in order to even run a graphics-intensive game (or, for those more productivity-inclined, to create detailed images and video), one needs a computer with a particularly robust processor, and the cooling system to keep it from burning out as you press it to its limits.
I think that’s basically what was going on last night; whether intentionally or not (oh, who am I kidding? I wasn’t deliberately pushing my brain to do any of this myself; it was doing all of this of its own accord), my brain was overclocking itself last night, and as a result, it managed to burn off a pound and a half overnight just from that effort.
Which is kind of weird, because it wasn’t as if there was a coherent story that I could tell you about, now that I’ve regained consciousness. Indeed, there was a certain amount of self-awareness to it all – not quite ‘lucid dreaming,’ although that would probably require an unusually high amount of processing power to experience in its own right – as it was clear that certain bits of it all were decidedly out of sequence.
Much of the scene took place around the dining room table at your parents house. It may be that my mind was busily trying to draw every last detail of that room as it was when the five of us (although I don’t remember noticing Daniel’s presence there. Then again, he’s pretty quiet as a rule, so that might be understandable) were gathered around it. The three of you – you and your parents – seemed to be aware of the fact that you had passed on, and were having me fill you in on the things that had transpired, since each of you had to leave. Now that I’m awake, I really wish I had asked as to what compelled you to come back and find out what was going on; it would seem that there’s no particular reason for any of you to have done so. After all, it’s barely been six years, even in your father’s case (wow, has it been so long already?); what could happen in such a relatively short period of time?
Of course, I’m well aware of what could happen, as I’ve had to live through it. It’s been an enlightening experience, if not particularly pleasant, as you know. It’s certainly changed my opinion of political affairs; you’ll recall how, back in college, I expressed the opinion that it didn’t really seem to matter who was running the country, and we’d probably do just as well to leave DC vacant for four years as not, for all the difference it made between one guy and another. It was one of those things that rather ground my gears to hear your folks compare certain chief executives to Hitler; goodness, they’d lived through the real guy, they ought to know better than that. Imagine what they would think about what happened in the wider world since they had to leave it!
But that was neither the question at hand, nor what I tried to explain – to them, or to you. Which should be understandable, as I’ve written to you over a million and a half words since your departure, and very little of it has had to do with politics (at least, I’ve tried to avoid it, but it’s gotten much more intrusive as a part of any of our individual lives these days); imagine how much there would have been to relate to your folks about what’s been happening. Indeed, as a means of compressing my explanation (which, now that I think of it, you could have filled them in on at least the first two or four years worth of their absence – stuff like Covid, our travels to see your ‘Aunt’ Ruth, and the like), I’d decided to take a ‘pictures are worth a thousand words’ approach, and somehow boiled the bulk of these letters down into comic strip form. Maybe this is what took all that mental processing power, as you know full well I’m not a particularly skilled artist.
Be that as it may, this is where things get silly, because this comic strip (why do they call them that, when they don’t necessarily have punch lines, or comedy in general? What, is ‘drama strip’ or ‘tragic strip’ too weird a term?) was printed on a roll of toilet paper (okay, maybe that’s the comedy, after all). Worse yet, as I started to unroll the story of what’s been going on, I was mortified to discover that the panels had been printed out of sequence. Not backwards, necessarily, which would have made a certain amount of sense (and have been easily corrected – just unroll the entire story, and re-roll in onto the tube the opposite direction, and start at the real beginning. It might have been tedious, but as far as solutions go, it wouldn’t have been difficult); just random. Sure, I could have torn apart every panel from the roll and tried to arrange them for the purpose of explaining it all to them – and I’m sure that would have burned up an enormous amount of calories – but how long do you think I would have had to stay asleep to do that? Needless to say, things devolved into chaos from there.
And that’s how I managed to lose a pound and a half overnight, just from trying to construct a dream world that used to exist in the real world, but where I was bringing you and your folks up to speed (for whatever reason) with what was going on down here. I admit that I do wonder what they would think about how things were going, both in my own life (well, maybe that’s too much to ask – now that you’re out of my life, I’m not sure they’d be overly concerned about mine. Maybe Daniel’s) and in the wider world. Would they find the current climate to their liking? They were artists, and academics, after all.
The worst part about such a question is that I’m never going to get closure on it. They (and you) will never return, so while my mind can build elaborate conjectures, I can’t really prove any of it. You all would have to return in order to confirm the assumptions I’ve constructed, and that isn’t going to happen. Still, I can clearly burn a lot of calories in the process, and take that as the tiny victory that it is.
In the meantime, all I can do is to ask you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, as I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 