Dispatch from the Future Read online

  near my heart. This place was once water, but now

  it is sand. There is so much I want to tell you, but

  I have not eaten in three days and the fire you built

  is just cinders. You once asked me how I could be married

  to him, but look who died and look who lived; look who I’m

  drawing pictures of scorpions for. I can’t feel my legs.

  I don’t think you’ll be back in time. Listen: after

  you read this, you will be burned in a terrible accident.

  You will forget my name and the shape of the land

  you spent your life’s work learning, but you will

  never forget that you left me to die. My light

  is gone. I am writing to you now in the darkness.

  III

  In the dark times, will there be singing? Yes. There will be singing about the dark times.

  Bertolt Brecht

  No matter how disappointed you’ve been in the past, no matter how weary and resigned you’ve become, I know that you can now choose a path that will enable you to find and welcome your beloved joyfully. For, truly, there is someone for everyone. Take heart and be not discouraged. Love belongs to all of us.

  Katherine Woodward Thomas

  I’M READY, ARE YOU? – 23 (TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES)

  SWF ISO tall, dark and handsome

  entomologist for Panamanian adventure.

  Must not fear Colombian rebel groups,

  or refer to ex-girlfriends with fondness.

  The latter is non-negotiable. Please

  be prepared for foot and mouth disease,

  mosquitoes in the jungle after dusk,

  no cell phone reception, the consequences

  of taking German in high school,

  and the world’s largest predator bird.

  Pic for pic. I am a former debutante

  with a trust fund who suffers seizures

  accompanied by musical hallucinations.

  I hear Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. Friends

  say I’m a helpless romantic. (You would be, too,

  if you lost your entire family to a flash flood.)

  I recently returned from a six-month spiritual retreat

  and the only thing missing in my life now is danger.

  When replying, please indicate whether or not

  you own a dugout canoe. I will provide enough

  U.S. currency to bribe the insurgency and

  on New Year’s Eve we will enter the swampland.

  CALLING IN THE ONE

  The first rule of Calling in “The One”: 7 Weeks

  to Attract the Love of Your Life is don’t talk

  about calling in the one. The second rule is

  surround yourself with people who care for you

  enough to tell you that you’re better off alone

  so that if and when you do find “The One,” it’s like

  the most surprising thing ever. 95% of those

  surveyed said they’d been hurt in the past,

  but only 94% wanted to talk about it

  on a first date. Katherine Woodward Thomas,

  M.A., M.F.T., tells us, “Take heart and be not

  discouraged.” When asked what her heart seeks,

  Jennifer (not her real name) said a cold place,

  like Siberia, where she would never have to leave

  the house at all. This is just one example

  of how we set ourselves up to end our lives

  alone in remote places where by the time

  our bodies are found they are unrecognizable.

  After our friends don’t want to hear us talk

  about this anymore, Katherine Woodward Thomas

  invites us to buy diaries where our hearts may speak

  freely. She quotes Meggy Wang (not her real name),

  who once made perfume out of rose petals

  with her brother in their backyard and when

  they gave some to their mother, she said,

  “Mei you shi ching bu neng jie jue,” which

  the author was unable to translate, but if you ask

  Meggy she will tell you. My diary says things like

  “I doubt he could even keep a goldfish alive,” and,

  “if I was alone on a deserted island and could only bring

  one book it would not be yours, Katherine. It would not

  be yours.” In response to, “Describe a childhood trauma

  that you believe is preventing you from finding the one,”

  I wrote, “When I was four I wanted to name our kitten

  She-Ra and my mom wouldn’t let me.” And then I felt

  uncertain, a little ashamed, so I ripped out the page

  and burned it and put the ashes in an envelope and

  mailed them to the address of the house I grew up in.

  There is an entire chapter devoted to what we remember

  of our first house. When Meggy Wang thinks of hers

  she thinks of her first girlfriend and stalkers. Aaron

  thinks, “Oh my God why did they paint it like that.”

  Katherine tells us that our feelings about this house

  are the same sad feelings we feel about our low

  relationship IQ. We leave, new people move in,

  and yet we drive by in the middle of the night,

  hoping they’ll have the blinds open so we can see

  inside and feel worse about ourselves. Dear Katherine,

  I wrote in my diary today, I asked him if I should

  have surgery so my ears don’t stick out so far and

  he said no, and it was the most romantic thing

  anyone has ever said to me. Is he “The One”?

  What should I do? Write back soon.

  In two weeks we leave the country.

  MERCY

  The way you say pianist reminds me of a love story.

  You can face the wall until you can make a better face

  than that one. Anyway, we went to see the abortion movie

  everyone was talking about, and we went to the Pink Pony,

  which is really yellow and sans any small gentle horses, and I

  ordered a peanut butter and banana sandwich because I was too

  upset

  to look at meat and imagine it inside me. He ordered steak.

  The February darkness was forgotten outside as we swallowed

  in the lamplight, staring at each other’s hands, wishing they

  would do

  tricks. As I thought about my uterus, he told me about his

  wristwatch.

  I love my wristwatch, he said, I love it. You are probably

  thinking

  it’s inappropriate to roll up your sleeves at the table just to show

  you have something to hide and I shouldn’t have cried then,

  as I stared at the dark hairs below his shirtcuff. I didn’t cry.

  Let me tell you what I used to do with scissors, I said, and I told

  him. And then he waited for someone to come refill our glasses,

  I waited for someone to bring a scalpel set. I wanted violence,

  someone to fight in the dirty slushed gutters of Ludlow Street.

  He was too small to fight, though; I had to wear flats. What are you

  thinking? I said. Right now? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing.

  I was thinking of being plundered by a Viking. The least

  he could have done was put his hands on me in the dark.

  You know how cold that winter was. You know what I mean

  when I say whaling harpoon. You’ve seen pictures of what I want.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY LIFE PART VII

  I can’t go to the east village anymore

  because it is like going on a tour

  of my worst dates. I get older, my heart

  leaps at the sight of children

  who don’t belong to me, I pronounce

  ever
ything like an Italian opera title.

  I used to listen to songs and have someone

  in mind for the you parts, now I just want

  to be where the light is intense, I want

  the kind of heat that kills you

  if you drive into it unprepared. This

  isn’t a metaphor for anything else.

  When I speak of the light, I mean the light.

  I go to church and sing along and feel

  just as moved as if my faith were blind.

  When I speak of the blind, I mean

  the light. Truly the only things Lindsey Lohan and I

  have in common are our preoccupations

  with fame and weight loss, and yet I recognize

  a kinship there, as if those two things mattered

  more than anything. When I speak of

  the darkness, I mean this living.

  In a restaurant called Caracas,

  I once spent fifteen minutes arguing

  about an Ayn Rand book because

  every time he said Anthem I thought

  he meant We the Living and I said

  what dystopia, what about the woman,

  and he said what about the Home

  of the Infants and I said what

  Home of the Infants? What about

  loving a man so much you’ll sleep

  with another man in order to finance

  the first man’s tuberculosis treatment?

  Welcome to Russia, I said, and we

  were looking at each other and then

  not. I tried to picture Caracas, tried

  to leave him for elsewhere, a fever.

  DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL

  In response to your nice message, yes, no, no, no,

  only when I’m drinking, I’d love to, and Anna Karenina.

  In response to the last question regarding what I like

  to do for fun, basically I come home from the factory

  and first I make a list on my dry erase board of each

  part of my life that makes me want to give up and

  then I think, which of these things do I have no

  control over, and then I erase the entire list and repeat

  positive affirmations in the mirror. Do you have any plans

  this Saturday? There is this obscure Ethiopian documentary

  I’ve been wanting to see ever since I read about it

  in Documentarian Quarterly about a young girl

  who is forced to spend two years hiding in an annex

  with her father, mother, sister, another couple, their

  son, and his cat. She keeps a video diary to chronicle

  her hopes and dreams and posts it on YouTube.

  Today I felt so alone and surrounded I built a fort

  underneath my bed and that’s why I’m holding

  this flashlight up to my face, you guys. I don’t

  know how much longer I can take this. We are

  down the last of the rice. One entire entry

  is thirteen minutes of her erasing all the answers

  in her crossword puzzle book and then getting up

  and going to the window to trace a heart

  with an arrow in the dust. Then she prays in a language

  we will never understand, and this is the last time

  we see her alive because her diaries lead the police

  right to the annex. After they’re all captured they’re

  sent deep into the desert where no flowers bloom,

  but it’s better, somehow, to realize the fragility

  of your life in the desert, where the sky is open,

  than in a small dark room and so even though they

  kill her loved ones and rob her of her humanity she

  kisses the earth. When I am overwhelmed and

  double-checking the locks and the windows

  and re-organizing the knife drawer again

  and washing my hands because I’ve forgotten

  if I’ve already washed them or not, I think

  I hear her voice and she is telling me I’m not

  alone. She says it’s not your fault until I sleep.

  Let us go then, you and I, to where the yellow

  sagebrush lights the sand. Let us go and hide

  from ghosts. Make me forget my name.

  Make me forget the touch of other hands.

  AS SOON AS YOU MEET SOMEONE YOU KNOW THE REASON YOU WILL LEAVE THEM

  I wrote you a love letter, but it was lost in the fire.

  Wolves got it. It put stones in its pockets and

  went in too deep. It lit a match on a bridge over

  the canyon and swan dived like the kind of bird

  that eats the dead. I wrote you a love letter, but

  it ran out of ammunition. It couldn’t kill

  the insurgency and so it slept all night

  under a veranda choked with hollyhock and

  rue and watermelon vines in the country

  where the trees are hollow highways

  for soldiers to drive through when on leave.

  I wrote you a love letter, but it was just

  the first six pages of The Book of Luke, ripped

  from a Gideon’s Bible I stole from the hotel

  I stayed in last week when I was trying

  to decide whether or not to steal the Bible.

  I read it four times. I found the story I heard

  at a wedding once, of the woman who asked

  her husband why he never brought home flowers,

  like the husband of her friend across the street did,

  and her husband told her he hardly knew the woman,

  why would he bring her flowers; except in the Bible

  it’s not a woman, it’s a lamb, and it isn’t flowers,

  it’s blood. I wrote you a love letter, but when I went

  to that wedding I accidentally left it in the guestbook

  instead of my name. Maybe I can get it back, but

  if I don’t try then I never have to see them again.

  In the Book of Lamentations, after the temple

  is destroyed, Banksy sits with Jeremiah inside

  a cavern near the Damascus gate and says,

  As soon as you meet someone you know

  the reason you will leave them, and Jeremiah

  writes this down so he can get it tattooed later.

  What I wouldn’t give sometimes for a pen

  and a piece of papyrus and a view of the sea

  in an apartment paid for by someone else’s hard,

  manual labor. I wrote you a love letter, but

  I will never leave you so you will never need

  to find it at the bottom of a drawer only to throw

  it away. Have you ever held a fish in your hands

  and watched the breath go in and out like horses,

  thinking, I’ll let you go when I can think of a metaphor

  to describe the broken light of all these stars?

  R_B_T L_VE S_NG

  Today I think I said why are you trying to hurt me

  at least four times to a large crowd of people and

  then I came home and ate vanilla frozen yogurt

  and listened to my mom tell me all about

  optimal heart rhythms and the application

  that is supposed to help us do this, optimize

  our hearts, so that we will have a higher tolerance

  for emotional pain, like robots do. If a robot is sad

  a robot will make cookies shaped like velociraptors

  and leave work early just to mail some to his

  mom. If a robot is really sad he will draw hearts

  and arrows and blood on every smooth surface.

  If a robot is totally devastated he will go on an online dating

  site and under “Who I’m looking for” write, “Someone

  to teach me how to love.” Then the robot will stare

  at this,
wonder if it makes him seem like he just wants

  sex, and write, “Someone to hurt me. I am a robot.”

  He will list his interests as parasailing, infinite regressions,

  and vegetarianism, and then go change the water

  in his guinea pig cage while he waits for the three thousand

  eligible women to come break down the door to the house

  he lives in with his mom and his guinea pig, Rumi.

  Sometimes when a robot feels really sad he will

  post fake emails from people who don’t exist on his blog

  just to prove to all the people who don’t read his blog

  that he has friends. Dear Luke, Thank you so much

  for last night. It’s still hard to walk. Dear Luke, I loved

  that poem you posted about staring into the hot,

  white sun. Dear Luke, I have two tickets to Faust

  tonight. Are you free? Love, Me. After three minutes

  of staring into the deep abyss of his inbox, Luke

  will update his online profile to say he’s looking

  for a relationship with a girl who signs all of the notes

  she gives him “me” with a row of xo. He will change

  his interests to pandas, emus, and tae kwon do. He will

  post a picture of himself standing in front of a great chasm,

  wearing sunglasses with blue tinted lenses. Luke will lie

  about his height and religion and what he thinks is sexy.

  Hi ladies, my name is Luke. I am a robot. I have leukemia.

  RE: HI

  Congratulations on Alaska, it sounds really great.

  I spoke with your wife yesterday—she didn’t know

  what to get you since you seem to have everything:

  dried figs, firewood, sugar cookie scented candles,