An Open Letter to the Adverse

I want you to know that everything I am about to tell you is a lie. I don't mean it to be but I have recently discovered that I am incapable of telling or knowing the truth. This is disturbing to me (lie) and it makes it extremely difficult to proceed knowing that there is no truth to what I can say. Keats said something like truth is beauty and beauty truth or maybe that is exactly what he said, and so for me this confession is about me not being able to distinguish not only the truth but also the beauty that I have for so long said my life was about finding. That the preceding paragraph is untrue and that this paragraph is also completely fabricated out of nothing pains me somewhat, although the prevailing declarations as to the felicity of anything I have ever written and am currently writing makes the suspicion of what I am up to more than merely difficult, it makes it impossible. If anyone is able to read any of these words, then surely what I am trying to say cannot be misunderstood as being any truer or more false than anything that has ever been written by me before. That this is a lie compounds the difficulty. I was told with a sly grin this afternoon by the Rite Aid clerk that those of us born on the eighth of June were said to be extremely smart. He knew my birthday because I was buying a product containing that most foul ingredient nicotine and when he asked me I told him what I knew because at the time I thought that it was true. I do not actually remember being told the date of my birth on the day of my birth, and in fact am not now convinced that I was ever even really born. As far as I know I just always have been. My reply to the clerk's statement was prophetic. What I said in response was something that I have always believed but do not know if I believe anymore and that was, "I'm not sure that is any kind of advantage." To which he looked at me knowingly and walking away said, "I know what you mean" even though it is not possible that he did. I walked out of the store then with my product and one of my sons in tow. This last sentence seems to be truthful, but it cannot have happened that way. Many of you have been on to me for a long time and for that I honor you. I am not writing this for you. If you are one of those people saying, "yeah, yeah, is there something else here?" the answer is no. But if you are someone who thought that I was someone who has ever said anything honest, then you are my audience. I embrace you and welcome you to the new truth of me that there is no truth in me. This is a lie as well. If I am trying to say that I am dishonest, then how can this confession be taken as anything but a lie? It is not my intention to do all the thinking for you, and I cannot afford the time it would take explaining what is so painfully apparent to me now and to those of you who are no longer reading. I assure you I have confessed nothing yet but what has already been known by others not me. I write out of amazement that I write and as a warning to you still reading that there are creatures in this world much more devious than I. Remember that the sly-grinning clerk said people of my supposed birthday were extremely smart, but did not say the smartest ever (an omission I am still reeling from) and therefore it can be concluded, though in no way correctly, that there are indeed smarter persons out there, and that their lies are much more clever and invasive and are not recognized nor admitted to. I am out here and so are they. This is a lie, of course, but one so good that my saying what it is does not make it any more true. One truth that you will probably have to admit is that my paragraph length is increasing, while my ever distancing point is not. If you hung in on that one there is a special prize waiting for you and here it is: while I have tried to be an upright guy, there are some of you that do not want it to be so and it is for you that I have made my life into the one that you sometimes see but mostly do not. I spend a lot of my time not in your company and while I sometimes like to think of myself as the lone companion, the weight of the inherent meaning becomes burdensome and forces me into a lapse where the only thing that I can come up with are synonyms for heavy, even when there is no apparent onus to do so. I am extremely smart which is why I lie and have no recourse to do anything else. Asleep on the couch in the next room is the television's latest victim–myself on Prozac and beer. Earlier I had gone out without telling anyone that I was and I ceased to be. When I got back, there I was, already gone, so I sat in front of it and watched anyway as if there was­­­­ something I could learn--in fact--as if there was anything I was. What I cannot do is continue to be as I was as I am no longer. I have crossed over whatever honesty there was in me and Truth and I have spoken our last. Not even this is true. There is no heart in what I say. My density has collapsed and is red-faced with exhaustion and not-knowing. So, to whoever is left still reading, and hopefully it is you the one I have encoded all this language to if only you are not yourself collapsed, remember that what is beautiful is truth, but only if you believe it, and it is the act of belief that causes the beauty, and that the moment you forget this, what was truth in your life ceases to be, and that the remedy is simple and effective but cannot be said honestly by me except by endlessly circling and restating what is certain to be false. What this is there is no reason to state. It could only be a lie after all, as this is.