Imaginary You

I was imagining myself as a being with different parameters of perception. I was aware that I was observing you while creating you and I was imagining you doing a thought exercise being willing to trade your current life for a life in which you wake up early every morning and have a great day, an incredibly great day, every single day, but you always wind up, during the last five minutes of the day, shuddering and screaming in stark terror, fully aware of the most frightening possible experience that you had never before imagined is suddenly occurring. After five minutes of it, it doesn’t matter where you are, what you knew, what you think you knew, what you didn’t know, or why you couldn’t possibly understand what you couldn’t possibly understand. Beyond that, whenever, the next day, some things become so obvious about your predicament that you came up with a catch-phrase: It Is Exactly What … It Is made you mildly famous as a C-level amateur meme generator on YouTube and, unfortunately, what made it impossible for you to walk around in public without being harassed in some form, usually by douchebags, the type of douchebags who hang out on message boards and Facebook and Twitter, and they yammer and the they stammer and they tell you they’re pissed, not even at you, just some generic “you” who happens to have been born some time 25—no, 50—no, no, 25—no, no, no, no, Dude: it’s 50 or greater— Well, it can’t be less—Do you even read what you type? How can you ask a question like that when the point trying to be made is that anyone born into any societal or ethnic or economic or racial or any other category from somewhere like The Princeton School of Telling You Who You Are identity compendium of subcategories beyond subcategories when you can’t even tell the difference between a “generic” you and the real you, the you that constantly invents itself and rocks out without any memory of what the fuck was just going on, oh my lord, sweet, sweet Sweet Sweet!

But those five minutes are inaccessible in memory each day, every day and yet there’s no way for anyone who does know—friends or family—to change your last moments of consciousness each day, meaning you'd be terrified nightly for five minutes which will be followed by a coma of sorts until you wake the next morning—who knows where or how you got there? Do you want that life? Percentage wise, it’s a great deal. No matter what anyone knows about the last five minutes of your every-night, they will never be able to make you experience anything bad on any day, ever, because everyone of your days begins wonderfully no matter what happened the night before and no matter what anyone believes they are going to do to create a bad situation, intentionally or not. The zen of the universe has said, “No, this one exists in this pattern for eternity.” No one else but you know and, so, no one believes you; well, better said that they believe you sincerely believes you’re forgetting, but that it must be pathological or, oh, some such psychological word that means you’re fucking cuckoo-cuckoo.

That could be you. Think about your life now. And now stop thinking about it in terms of the patterns you’ve identified that make up your day. Routines, if you will: Route to work, favorite restaurant or bar, checking your communications device for digital information flooding your Instagram, your Twitter, your or your Tendr. That you, this you I’m creating as I’m asking you to imagine that what I am writing is actually happening and you have awareness of my awareness of everything your imaginary you is experiencing at all times. I am, in some confused way, the god of your imaginary self. So, to best prepare myself for this task, I never thought about that until now and so it turns out to have been unimportant. Telling you what didn’t happen is sometimes as important as telling you what did. It wasn’t long ago that you felt embarrassed at the thought that I knew it. And then you cried when you realized I not only knew but also experienced, through my body, through my consciousness, and through whatever “else” that exists that has any possible use or meaning as possible or probable candidates for experience as a de-longated French Pole. But … you also cried when you realized, “If he’s writing me this letter, this letter that … now that I think about it, is long overdue! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?

But of course, I’ll say, This is your imaginary you speaking. Who could have told you anything at all other than me? Seeing as how I’m imagining you imagining that you can live as I’m describing while being the object of my observance, I’d say “me.” I’m not judgmental, I’ll let you know that. I don’t interfere in any way. In no way, shape, or form has my imaginary experience of what imaginary you experiences been a source of friction between us. I dug you. It was cool. I hurt when you hurt and I hurt about exactly what you hurt about. This isn’t about empathy or sympathy or judgment or anything like such concepts as they can’t exist in this imaginary world where I imagine you most often live. 

That was easily the best place to put to use my battery-activated mind. I call him Pudge Jocket Marl-Bone, the Fish Stealer. He goes by many other names, however, most of them you have never heard; in fact, if you heard some of those other names that you haven’t heard then all of your most cherished memories would be destroyed.

So, you think you got off lucky? I mean, I was imagining me imagining you imagine yourself as if you were following the instructions, both hidden and explicit? Remember, if you can, that your imaginary you always wakes in the morning completely unaware of the last five minutes of the night before. Imaginary you is able to recall all of your memories each day of your life except for those precious, few minutes right before sleep. In every terror experience which had been going on for years, every other minute except for those five minutes of panic attacks, catatonia, psychosis, The Jumping Frenchman of Maine, and coprophagy (at least one feeding during every five minute terror). Neither must I say that things are far too sweet. Nothing told no one about the picture at the park of me eating in the dark while sitting on the bark of a log as it was dislodged from the shore and swept up in the fierce upper current of the Upper Maw Maw Bi-Hi-Tiki-Mai-Tai, the river known by locals for its mystical healing powers but also for the Bark-Backed Biddle Puss, easily the most famous for rigor in recent wild wet water rides; it’s the type of river sometimes thought about in a snidely fashion by people who constantly tell themselves, in not so many words, just how lightly and fairly they believe that their use their subtle self-deceptive ethical mechanisms enabling them to love the thrill of white water “log-barging” makes them superior to anyone who hasn’t or won’t do it. They lie, they tell stories about their new-found powers, the powers they “discovered” they had after watching an investigative documentary about synesthesia or by seeing God in the form of a talking billygoat. 

There’s no reason to go on with this. But then again, there was no reason to not go on with this. At that moment, I tasted what it meant to be free: the power to choose. Whatever I prefer. Whatever I reason. Whatever I feel. Whatever I want. Whatever you want. Whatever you need. Whatever I need. Whatever we need. 

So, what did I do? I decided to stop writing.