regress'd

I received a letter on Monday from [redacted]. Despite how quickly they tend to be read, I definitely like to receive typewritten letters- typing allows, I think, for a more immediate expression of thought than handwriting does. Anyway, [redacted] is in New York, and he doesn't sound particularly happy. He does, on the other hand, sound brilliant. His letter was very stream of conscience and surreal - it has mad me think some about my more journalistic style of correspondence. I wish I had a printer. Anyway, I now need to write him back, something good, and write to [redacted]. Alas. Today I finished reading Nietzsche. He's pretty great, quite tragic - but cheerful in his tragedy. He makes me think - and, moreover, reminds me that I must think with passion. Passion is a thing that I have been short on (at least it has appeared so) for quite a while - years perhaps. Every so often I'll have a spark of rage or loathing - something passionate, but it almost always fades back into a kind of stasis. I must think more, and think more passionately - it is not unforgivable to be wrong - it is unforgivable to lack the courage to err. I also read today Gogol's "Diary of a Madman." I'd read Dead Souls, but this was a bit more surrealistic - and he predated surrealism by (I think) 1 1/2 ~ 2 centuries. (ahem: more like a mere 90 years or so. -ed.) Ah madness! It seems it must take an excess of passion and no great capacity for thought to be mad as was Gogol's protagonist. Certainly he lacked the capacity for honest self-appraisal. The rest - who knows. I think he was doomed from the outset. Perhaps everyone is. Though doomed is a strong word - it certainly smells of tragedy - I find it fitting. Fate is too much bandied about - karma too esoteric - destiny too hopeful and irresponsibly star-eyed. Doom I think carries what I look for. It is fate and kismet, karma and destiny without all the frills. All stripped down - I am doomed to shape and be shaped by my experiences. And I can trace it back pretty far - though I lack the backbone to crawl through my pre-vertebrate whims. [redacted] said that his goal for the months to come was to regress as far back as he could - though I don't know what he's looking to do away with. I think that sounds good. I'm not sure how much I can regress - but it would doubtless do me well to - perhaps while meditating - trace my objectives and their origins: to perform a preparatory for a fundamental ontology of the apparent being of me as a phenomenon perceived by me. Or something like that. Let's see. Do I have a grounding objective? I shall think on this. And I shall leave myself only with the warning that that creature before you has a capacity for wily and fantastic rationalizing fabrications. And moreover - he is well trained in the art of not confronting... anything potentially disturbing. Watch your step. Bite your tongue. Lick your watch. Kick out your teeth. Till we meet again - hopefully a freer and less constrained will - Dasvadanya.